Reality Check: Chris Williamson WON his legal challenge
The media and the PLP are spinning their own gamesmanship as victory
Kit Knightly
Unless you’ve been paying close attention, it’s probably hard to keep up with just how many times Chris Williamson MP has been suspended from the Labour Party. For those of you keeping score, it’s three times. That number likely surprises some of you, but we’ll get to that.
Here’s a quick timeline:
FEBRUARY 2019 – A video emerges of Chris Williamson speaking at an event for Momentum in Sheffield (above). In the video Williamson claims that Labour have been “too apologetic” in dealing with accusations of antisemitism, and that they should stand up for their record as an anti-racist party.
The press portrayed this very dishonestly – and still do to this day – summing it up as “Williamson claimed Labour too apologetic over antisemitism”. He is suspended before the end of the month, pending an investigation.
26th JUNE 2019 – Four months later Williamson is re-instated. This caused much outrage in both the press and PLP.
A list of very predictable names wrote articles about it.
28th JUNE 2019 – Amazingly, just TWO DAYS LATER, Williamson is “re-suspended”.
The decision of the disciplinary panel was overturned, a second panel claiming the decision to reinstate Williamson “cannot safely stand”. (They never explain what, if anything, that actually means).
8th JULY 2019 – The Guardian publishes an open letter signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finklestein, defending Williamson against charges of racism, and claiming the accusations were “politically motivated”.
9th JULY 2019 – The Guardian takes the letter down, with no explanation. The Huffington Post wrote a piece defending the decision. OffGuardian republished the letter in full.
14th AUGUST 2019 – Williamson, following a crowd-funding campaign, announces he is taking the Labour Party to court. He claims they violated their rules when they “re-suspended” him without a hearing or explanation.
3rd SEPTEMBER 2019 – This is where things get…convuluted. The Labour Party announce they are suspending Williamson…again. As in, he’s now suspended twice. (Extra-suspended? Mega-suspended? Double-suspended?)
Why did they do this seemingly pointless thing? Well, they argue, it’s because Williamson had:
undermined the party’s ability to campaign against antisemitism by publicly characterising the disciplinary processes against racism as “politically motivated and/or not genuine”
Williamson, and his legal team, argued it was more cynical than that – That Labour had added a further suspension because they knew they were about to lose in court.
An argument that gained some strong circumstantial evidence when…
10th OCTOBER 2019 – Labour lose in court. Ignore the headlines: That’s what happened. The original case brought was that Labour had acted unlawfully when “re-suspending” Williamson, and the Judge – Justice Pepperall – found in Williamson’s favour, declaring that Labour had acted “unlawfully”:
Having communicated the panel’s decision as final, the Labour Party acted unfairly in that there was no proper reason for reopening the case against Mr Williamson and referring the original allegations to the (national constitutional committee)….the Labour Party is no longer able lawfully to pursue the original disciplinary case against Mr Williamson.”
However, the Labour party had issued its “double suspension” on unrelated matters, and on that front the Judge ruled:
nothing in the new allegations, the timing of the letter of September 3 or the decision to suspend that entitles me to take the view upon the papers that the Labour Party is acting either unfairly or other than in good faith.”
So, to sum up, the sneaky workaround was highly effective.
Chris Williamson is still suspended from the Labour Party, despite a court ruling that the NEC had acted “unfairly” and “unlawfully”, the PLP still get exactly what they wanted.
This has allowed every mainstream publication to run this headline:
MP Chris Williamson loses anti-Semitism suspension appeal
The BBC, The Guardian, The Jewish Chronicle, The Evening Standard, The Daily Mail…they all take the same dishonest angle. Only a couple of them even mention the first finding.
All of them running the same dishonest headline, saved from outright deception by a tiny kernel of manipulated, contrived and contextless “truth”.
Chris Williamson won. Labour cheated. The media lied.
That’s the actual truth.
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Re ‘Anti-semitism’ :
How many Tories were at the Battle of Cable Street?
Corbyn has been cornered, even McDonnell is manouevring to take over.
The great hope of 2015-2017 has gone. I’ve left the Party over the change to Remain or 2nd Peoples’ vote.
So shades of the 1930s, and fascism again?
Labour Party risks bankruptcy over antisemitism investigation, executive members fear
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-party-bankruptcy-antisemitism-investigation-corbyn-executive-a9153561.html
A whole lot of second hand gossip from the Independent masquerading as “journalism” (with sources unnamed, of course). The ‘reporter’ could have made a start by telling us his definition of anti-Semitism. But of course pedlars of the ‘anti-Semitism in Labour’ tale never do – that would be giving the game away! And don’t expect to be told that the EHRC’s political independence has been seriously questioned.
The media lying?
Surely not?
It will very soon become a crime to talk about war crimes.
Looking at the comments, they have little to do with the subject matter.
The attacks on Williamson are coming from those whose objective is to stop any discussion on the crimes of Israel and to make sure that Corbyn does not become PM because of his support for Israel.
So what were the other claims unrelated to the court case that caused another suspension? This seems to have been omitted from the article.
Does a party that can do this to decent people like Chris Williamson deserve a single vote from anybody???
The party is sadly inished, torn apart by its neoliberals on the right, and its Trots on the left.
Finished
Is that the objective of Labour Friends of Israel?
Yes, and the Conservative Friends of Israel, and also the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel. How can one, tiny country in the Middle East, have so much control and influence over far larger countries in the West?
https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/it-s-naive-to-think-david-ward-is-the-true-voice-of-the-lib-dem-s-on-israel-1.56341
Andy, Israel is not “one tiny country in the Middle East”; it is both much smaller and much bigger: the Israel of Britain’s “Dear Lord Rothschild is a Square Mile in The City of London; and the creatures that lurk there have tentacles which reach around the world.
Magic.
The Arabs with all their oil are dwarfs compared to Israel – according to some here 😀
Most of them are Zionist stooges in bed with that regime for years.
Probably. I’m just stating what I see as inevitable, I don’t support the falling apart though.
Actually the zionist media and it’s supporters will never be satisfied until /unless they get what they want which is total control of the political agenda so the government of the day will always tilt in it’s direction.
They lie ,they cheat ,they steal and they spin the truth .Come to think of it ,isn’t that what Pompeo admitted to doing.
LOL
The sad fact is that Labour has been hijacked by hardcore Trotkyists who saw Corbyn as an opportunity to jump ship from SWP and other far left factions.
Unfortunately, as many of these people are well intentioned and good people, an equal number of them, in my experience, are absolute scumbags, full of hate, spite and worse…in fact no different to the far right neo-Kippers….incidentally both wanting to usurp Parliamentary democracy and have a No Deal Brexit, all for the orgasm of achieving chaos.
Amongst all of their negativity, many have aimed their venom at the Jews and are not able to differentiate rightful protest against the far right Israelis from painting all Jews with the same brush.
Labour never had a problem with Jewish people until these nutter Trots flooded the party….go figure, and a bit of self-reflection, and eat a bit of humble pie.
Excuse my ignorance Frank, but I thought Labour had been hijacked by Tony Blair clones, i.e those who fully support Neoliberalism (capitalism on steroids) as well as their undying love for Empire and Imperialism.
I agree Gezzah, but it’s gone from being a Tory lite party to now being in danger of being unelectable due to the flood of hard left. It’s been torn apart by both sides.
My Fundamental point Gezzah is that the Labour Party has become so broken and divided by BOTH the right and left wings, that it’s fatally flawed, it cannot recover, sadly.
It really needs break in half, two new parties. But that will not happen due to the British FPTP system, and because the Labour brand and party machine is huge, and so right and left will continue to fight over it. This fighting is to the detriment of the average working class person as they are Completely failed by not having a representative and effective Labour Party governing today.
Given any previous leader, bar Wurzel Gummidge, Labour would now be miles ahead in the polls, and in fact would be in power. Unfortunately, the very nice bloke but useless leader Jeremy is failing the working classes, failing the country by not being in power.
All these left-right idealogical struggles within the Labour Party, and across UK politics, are ruining the country permanently.
Frank, hear your points, and I would state that what is really ruining Britain, along with pretty much all of the West is the almost religious devotion to the warped con job known as Neoliberalism, or as Thatcher was fond of saying ‘trickle down economics’ where its been more like a flood up to the wealthiest 5% or so.
Austerity, welfare cuts, privatisation, user pays, tax cuts for the already well heeled, libraries and other services closed, a very marked increase in inequality – refer to any recent Oxfam report: the world’s 26 richest people have more combined wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion people? How obscene.
The whole ethos of Neoliberalism is basically survival of the fittest; winners and losers, where if you live in poverty or are homeless, its your fault for ‘not trying hard enough’ or ‘not working hard enough’. This ideology is about creating atomised individuals who ultimately express their ‘democracy’ by…. consuming. Going shopping. It breaks down a sense of community, solidarity and empathy for those less fortunate.
This, in my opinion, is why things are going to shite in the West. Am not a fan of George Monbiot, but he wrote an excellent article a few years ago called ‘Neoliberalism, The Ideology At The Root Of All Our Problems’. Recommend it. Have a good day.
Thatch’ was a clever woman – that’s not me saying that BTW, its Tony Benn.
Thanks Harry. Yep, it was all done very very deliberately. When Thatcher died, most of my British expat customers (Big Issue mag) here in Aussie held parties to celebrate. Nearly all were from the North of England.
Other leaders do not support justice for Palestinians, so Corbyn has to be brought down.
Even Labour’s problem with the FPTP system is of their own doing. The Liberal Democrats went so far as to amend their own ideas of the best alternative to FPTP to match Labour’s manifesto. Then Labour campaigned against its own manifesto! In that respect, they deserve to struggle with FPTP, since they were handed an excellent chance to change it.
Frank Speaker does a ‘how to’ in completely discrediting oneself on OffG. Time to come back as a newbie “Frank”.
I have no need to hide, I am an independent thinker, and I call out the nutters on both the right and left and state a few home truths than neither side enjoys hearing.
You claim to be an independent thinker Frank, and yet your comments give every indication that you’ve been brain-washed by the Daily Mail.
The notion that the fast dwindling number of “hard-core Trotskyists” in Britain could hijack a party of 540,000 members is risible, as well as being a classic right-wing position.
As risible as the liberal platitude that both left and right are to blame.
Your lot are baying for a revolution. The Kippers are baying for a revolution. I rest my case.
And by the way, and I am not a liberal.
“Labour never had a problem with Jewish people” till the Board of Deputies, the local Mossad Office, and their dirty, lying, dishonest, corrupt acolytes in the fake MSM DECIDED TO INVENT ONE.
The Jews are aiming their venom against Corbyn and Labour. All three Jewish newspapers had the same anti-Corbyn/Labour headline.
Actually, I think Off Guardian has been hi-jacked by too many holier than thou misanthropes.
The comments have become less and less interesting to read.
The more I think about it the more it seems to me that the Labour party in particular and social-democratic outfits in general are the real barrier for any democratic transformation of society. These second elevens for the PTB have always been, and still are, a crucial pillar of support for the stability of the capitalist/imperialist systems in the west. They flatter to deceive offering all sorts of goodies in terms of policies which will only exist on paper and never in fact will be realised. Moreover, in terms of foreign policy they are staunchly pro-NATO, and loyal members of this imperialist alliance. Labour, social-democracy is not the solution, it is the problem. This was not perhaps – and that’s a big perhaps – always the case, but this conversion of Labour to New Labour and social-democracy to neoliberalism represented what seems the definitive end of the centre-left as a progressive class force and its conversion into just another establishment party. This is well summed up by Wolfgang Streeck:
‘’Social democrats have thought they could ride the market, to make it subservient to social purposes; for example, relying on privatization to make social services more responsive to citizens-renamed-customers.
In the course of events they sacrificed the dignity of the public sphere and subjected its operation to the imperative of profitability. They also became agents of capitalist expansion at a time when capitalists were desperately looking for new business.
In the process they lost contact with a large segment of their popular constituency — those unable or unwilling to “play the market,” for example with their old-age pensions.
‘’As for left parties, like Podemos and Jeremy Corbyn — don’t forget Bernie Sanders! — we will see.’’ (It would seem that Corbyn has had a Damascene conversion on EU membership.) ‘’In any case, more effective forms of mass mobilization and direct action must be found, to bring voters back, and hopefully it will be possible to rebuild trade unions one way or other.
What makes me pessimistic, though, is the fate of Syriza — how they caved in to the pressures of the other governments, of the IMF, of their own middle class — and perhaps of their strange illusions on “the European idea.”
Anticipating the time-honoured response, to wit ‘but what is your alternative’’, well for Labour party loyalists I would reply, No, what is your alternative? Social democracy had a fair run between 1945 and 1975, but that is over. It is, I would assert, in a state of irreversible decline. The centre left has made its peace with the establishment, and perhaps that was always the case. The Labour party is, having detached itself from the traditional working class, unquestionably now a middle-class, liberal, Remainer party. Such as grouping of political tendencies is hardly likely to effect the fundamental social and political change so desperately needed in the UK. The alternative is to build some sort of mass socialist movement primarily at the national level which must of necessity form alliances with those class and political forces likely to emerge as the crisis deepens. This of course would make the labours of Hercules look like a stroll in the park. But it might be more feasible than sticking to what has become a walking anachronism and an obstacle to meaningful change.
Spont-on Frankie, your anti-democratic Marxists and Trots who hand out their “democracy” definitely have the solution to the lack of democracy in the UK. ROFL.
And the record number of members of the largest socialist political party in Europe?
Met one of them today ( whilst seeing off the fascist ‘Yorkshire Patriots’ in Dewsbury ) who’d resigned his membership in disgust at the Labour Party’s ‘rightward drift’. Incidentally,that Party’s parliamentary cretinism prevents it from mobilising its 600k. members to crush the far right and fascists on our streets today – mimicking the catastrophic failure of the German SPD to resist the Nazis’ rise to power.
Open the windows there is a smell of gas around here.
The far right kipper farts and Bannons Gammons created and deployed across the EU by the billionaire neocons have FAILED.
That includes the Afd.
It is not the Labour party members job to fight the wankers on the streets. Their main job is to get a decent government that will clear them up wherever they want to terrorize localities.
So, Dungroanin, it’s not the ‘job’ of Labour’s half a million members to stand up to the Nazis with their street processions? No, their ‘job’ is to go out and secure votes for JC so that we can have ‘a decent government’. Perhaps you and your kin would rather not understand what lay behind the failure of the German SPD and KPD to stop Hitler and the NSDAP, who were still in the late 20’s politically insignificant The reality to which you seem blind is that there are moments of acute economic and social crisis when the ruling class decides that your sacred parliamentary ‘democracy’ is one which had better be dispensed with. When that moment came in January 1933, the SPD leadership clung like lemmings to their belief that the answer lay in an election – until they were carted off to Dachau and their party ( along with the entire trade union movement ) got banned.
This is exactly what I meant by ‘parliamentary cretinism’ , and unfortunately why it’s been left to me and others like me to lead – with the Anti Nazi League in the 70’s and 80’s, and today with Stand up to Racism/ Unite against Fascism. And it’s why the Labour Party, which in purely numerical terms outnumbers us by a factor of 100, is conspicuously absent as a party each time the fascists have to be countered. This was true in 1936, when Mosley’s British Union of Fascists were defeated by workers on the streets of East London, and it was true again in 1977 when we managed to mobilise big enough forces to stop the National Front in Lewisham. Labour’s response to this turning – point in the rising fortunes of the NF? We were ‘ red fascists ‘ ( Michael Foot, Leader of the Labour Party ).
I hope that reasoned argument may persuade you to a different view : rebut the case, to accede to it!!
Dungroanin, my friend, you are naivete incarnate! You and your fellow members should stay home whilst Nazis build their processions on the streets? Perhaps you’d rather not know how the German SPD and KPD managed to permit Hitler and the NSDAP to achieve state power in 1933?
It’s increasingly looking like Johnson will get “a deal” with the EU, which is also too good to be true. It will give him a huge majority at the anticipated election and time to negotiate “sweetheart deals” with America and Israel along with any unsavoury regeme they have a geopolitical interest in.
Labour are as good as finished with the remnants being divided between the Tories, LibDems and new non voters.
50 years of propaganda and neoliberal carrot and stick politics (the great council house giveaway, homes as assets + a generation kicked out of work and vilified as scroungers) has bourne a bitter fruit. Our young people eschew collectivism for individuality. Socialism and even Keynesian economics are dismissed in favour of supply-side economics, “choice” and “flexibility”.
In the UK it is going to become a choice between Johnson and Swinson or a Labour party amalgamation of the two….if they survive.
I find it extraordinary that the Trots here are so keen for Johnson to leave the EU and allow the Neocons to get a stronger grip on GB.
Nah…..you just wanted to insult me by labelling me a trot.
Not you specifically lundiel.
Where are these ‘Trots’ in the Labour Party? What are their names? What policies are they advocating?
Who in the party do you see as getting it right?
Just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse we have John McDonnell fawning all over Alistair Campbell: first saying he would be welcomed back into the party and secondly by denying Blair has any case to answer regarding war crimes – from 6:30.
Apparently Iraq was no more than a miscalculation any British PM in thrall to the neocons could have made.
How about bringing back Stalin, or Mao, is that the answer?
I don’t see how a perfect summary of how sick the Labour Party has become needs to give anyone a brain haemorrhage severe enough for them to imagine that totalitarianism is the same as applying appropriate surgery to the patient…
My point is that it’s become so sick and divided by the right and left wings, that it’s fatally flawed, it cannot recover, sadly. It needs to be broken in half, two new parties.
But that will not happen because the Labour brand and party machine is huge, and so right and left will continue to fight over it, to the detriment of the average working class person as they are failed by not having a representative and effective Labour Party governing.
Given any previous leader, bar Worzel, Labour would be miles ahead in the polls now and in fact would be in power, but look at how the nice bloke but useless leader Jeremy is failing the working classes, failing the country by not being in power. All these left-right idealogical struggles within the Labour Party, and across UK politics, are ruining the country permanently.
I fear you may be right.
I just hope not.
One thing that does interest me is the question of how easy, or difficult, it might be to get views like yours, or mine, directly to Jeremy C.
Or is he “protected” from genuinely independent opinion by the usual suspects…?
He certainly seems to have the intelligence to appreciate what has happened to his party, so I find myself wondering why he can’t find a solution to it.
What’s fascinating about your awful comments about Corbyn is that you fail utterly to mention that for more than four YEARS now he has had, pretty much, the entire UK media on his back constantly.
I’ve personally never witnessed anything like it. The BBC in particular has been vicious towards him. It has actively worked with people within the PLP to smear him at every opportunity and to mislead. Look at Kuennsberg, she was actually found to have doctored an interview with Corbyn to make it look like he’d said something he hadn’t said. The BBC Trust admitted this!
We also had staged, and staggered, resignations from the shadow cabinet on the Daily Politics. We had Malhotra claiming McDonnell’s people had “broken in” to her office. An investigation by the Speaker’s Office determined no break in had occurred. We had a “crying” Angela Eagle appearing on the Daily Politics declaring, “I can’t do this any more.” (It was then discovered that her website “Angela for Leader” was already up and running!
In short, our media is corrupt and the worst offender is the publicly funded BBC which breaks its own political impartiality code several hundred times a day! Its vendetta against Corbyn has been relentless and poisonous. Kuennsberg bragged that she got updates from inside PLP meetings. Just a few weeks back on the (now) Politics Live she said to Jo Coburn, “Hang on, I’ve just received the briefing papers for the PLP meeting later. Papers distributed only to PLP members…but one of her little helpers sent it on. It would make you sick!
Oh but watch Kuennsberg when she interviews Johnson! She simpers like a stupid schoolgirl, flirts with him, fails to challenge him on anything! Witness the BBC response to the reckless, irresponsible tweets that came from “Downing Street” last week. No challenge at all, no concern about the aggressive tone, the attacks on Ireland and Germany or the damage that could be done to the ongoing talks. Kuennsberg? She said we should have expected this sort of approach, nothing to see here. She defended it!
You can keep blaming Corbyn for all our ills but you’d be wrong. Our biggest problem is we have a bent media.
Well expressed, Jo.
As a professional of media research & analysis, to the highest level of corporate intelligence, for over 40 years, let me add some weight to what you say and confirm unequivocally that you are 100% for sure, 100% Correct.
May’s first ‘detail’ enacted in office, was to stifle and squash any discussion of a LEVESON 2:0 enquiry, which Lord Justice Leveson was quite happy to engage himself with, after having already reduced Rupert Murdoch to his “most humbling moment” in Court: that should have been just the beginning and given Leveson’s Liverpudlian roots, where The SUN don’t shine anymore, (due to outrageous lies & smears), it was fair to presume that Leveson had and still has some ideas about how to ‘fix’ the media !
LEGALLY …
Campbell’s questions tell us everything about him. McDonnell is 100% wrong on the criminality of Blair and indeed Campbell. I hate these stupid questions. They are superficial, and jump around with the erratic madness that might befit anyone unable to concentrate for more than 30 seconds. Enough!!! Campbell is a fecking Tory snake!
The quotes reported in the Guardian, from McDonnell were pretty awful, especially the one about Corbyn “probably” standing down if Labour lose the election. I mean, we know Corbyn has enemies in the PLP but what the blazes is McDonnell playing at?
“Iraq a miscalculation” is the excuse the lying pricks teach the kids in British schools for their blatant war crimes
It’s like a microcosm of the UN.
You can condemn Israel, or the US for that matter, until you’re blue in the face, and you can even get overwhelming-majority resolutions in your favour.
But the Establishment/Deep State will still ignore you.
Once upon a time, as a very young civil servant, while in conversation with a senior manager about the way things work, he said to me, “Don’t let it worry you, all you need to remember is you can never beat the system Jo.” I’m 60 now. It still makes me mad that I still haven’t proved him wrong.
Yes, indeed.
But there is one thing we can do:
Create a parallel system of our own which is not based upon evil.
If we end up having nothing at all in common with the soulless automatons who run the world, well, so be it.
They will have nothing in common with us either.
In any case they only run commerce, and that has little to do with being human.
We don’t need them, and they don’t want us, so everybody’s happy.
Come the next election the labour party will be exterminated and working people will have to reunite around an new, bottom up organisation not the top down, bureacratic invention it is presently
The Labour Party hierarchy is opposed to socialism. The corporate media are lying propagandists for the corporate elite. Who would have thought it?
I doubt that Corbyn and his team are opposed to Socialism.
Of course the media lied, the U.K. media lie all the time. If I read the truth with regards to most political shenanigans I would be shocked.
I no longer expect the truth, we are drowning in corruption, bought and payed for deeply compromised politicians without a decent bone between them, that little ( littler than he used to be) piece of shit Watson being a perfect example of the type of fraudulent backhander money grabbing excuse for a human.
When Corbyn goes and I reckon that will be sooner rather than later the real left will drop the Labour Party in their droves.
The fact that Assange has been vilified by them should be enough for the ordinary person but it’s not because many people in the U.K. are either asleep or doused in the DM so in fact brain dead.
An election is coming very soon.
Labour will not fare well.
They may even be completely wiped out.
This will be followed by a purge of Corbyn and the few decent people remaining in the PLP.
Some Blair clone, Thornberry, Benn, Starmer, maybe even Phillips (after all, “It should be a woman”) will seize Jezza’s somewhat tarnished crown of a rump Labour that is by now largely irrelevant.
At which point most of the membership will simply vote with their feet.
Maybe a new party can be formed without any of the old baggage.
But Labour now is just a dead end, a lost cause, a complete waste of time, effort and energy.
Unfortunately.
I get your message, and you may be right, but my view is that Labour has simply been infiltrated, and infiltration, once discovered, can be rooted out, rather than dismissing the whole edifice as “just a dead end”.
I often think of what a new party might achieve, but my experience of countries which have many political parties is that the most sensible course of action usually gets diluted by the sheer quantity of alternative proposals, and nothing gets done.
Have recently finished rereading Homage to Catalonia and have now almost finished a Penguin book of Orwell’s journalistic pieces. Not all are political by any means, but those that are are fascinating.
More or less in chronological order, they go from just before WW2 to just after. It’s well known that he was anti-Soviet-Communist and it seems that most national CP parties of the day followed the Soviet line slavishly so he was anti- them as well.
Seems he had long given up on the Labour party, and even on Attlee. Not sure what he made of the Attlee government. Haven’t really got far enough into it yet, but I suspect he’d have been disappointed. He’d briefly been a member of the ILP. I’m not sure why he left it.
Anyway, I think what surprised me was how anti- capitalist he was, given that he did not support orthodox Communist parties. I think he was in favour of revolutionary socialism which the orthodox communist parties of the time were not, and the Labour Party certainly was not.
I would be fascinated to know what he would think of the present political situation. Not much, I think.
Yes, Orwell sussed the Labour party early on describing them as ‘pale pink humbug.’
I like this bit in The Road to Wigan Pier.
”It is of course true that plenty of people of working-class origin are socialist of the theoretical bookish kind. They belong either to the type I mentioned in the last chapter, the type who squirms into the middle-class via the literary intelligentsia. or the type that becomes a Labour MP or a high-up trade union official. This last type is one of the most desolating spectacles the world contains. He has been picked out to fight for his mates, and all it means to him is a soft job and the chance of ‘bettering’ himself. Not merely while but fighting the bourgeoisie he becomes bourgeois himself. (Ibid. p.164)
That is a little unfair, but I take the point GO is making. The political pondlife described above is common enough in centre-left circles. See Roberto Michels for the definitive work on the trajectory of social-democracy – Political Parties – first published as early as 1911, and as true – truer in fact – today than when it was first published.
Puts me in mind of the alternate words to the red flag: “The working class can kiss my arse, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last”.
Ever read The Road to Wigan Pier? In addition to some vivid descriptions of the lifestyles of mining families in the north of England during the Depression, Orwell also offers up (in the second half of the book) some very hard-hitting criticisms of the British bourgeois-lefties of his day, some of which were very prescient indeed, given all that we see going on today in the Labour Party!
I know I’m veering off-topic here but for anyone interested in Orwell I cannot recommend highly enough ‘The last man in Europe’: Dennis Glover’s rivetting account of Orwells life, and how he came to think the way he did (and of course the provisional title of 1984).
“Orwell could see that Burnham, was nothing but a naked power worshipper, and one of those annoying writers, typical of Marxists and former Marxists, who kept half a dozen directly contradictory ideas active at all times, sustaining the complex trick by means of subtle adjustments of his earlier definitions and prophesies. Dialectics, they called it; but Orwell had coined his own term for it: Doublethink. We could all be geniuses, he thought, if we could invent our own logic and adjust our predictions after the fact.”
A reference to James Burnham? The onetime Trotskyite turned paleocon?
Orwell stated his blueprint for an idealised economy in a few paragraphs.
He took it as self evident that state control and nationalisation of all large industries were far more efficient than capitalist private enterprise could ever be.
In this he may have been heavily influenced by the relative success of the state controlled wartime economy.
He saw a role for small scale private enterprise, self employment, and small private farms up to about 25 acres.
Parliament, freedom of the press and religion would survive, albeit not in an unchanged form.
There would be universal education and health systems shared by all regardless of class or income.
Like Xi-China. Now they pay through facial recognition, also in social credits for any “dissent”. Too bad Orwell died young.
The unpeopling of Chris Williamson (by the Labour machine) more or less tells us that left-wing thought is simply no longer tolerated outside of a few sparsely attended fringe meetings.
Quivering in your boots while Britain is devoured by the right – how fucking pathetic can you get.
On the plus side Chris has tabled an early day motion asking the self-aggrandising wankers in the House of Commons to condemn “the on-going mistreatment and imprisonment of investigative journalist Julian Assange by the UK; agrees with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that his treatment appears to contravene the principles of necessity and proportionality envisaged under human rights standards; opposes any attempt to extradite Mr Assange to the United States, either directly from the UK or by onward extradition from Sweden; believes that his case has broader consequences for media freedoms, freedom of speech and civil liberties in the UK; and calls on the Government to ensure that Mr Assange is released, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement are respected and that he is afforded the right of compensation for his mistreatment by the UK.”
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/53306/ongoing-incarceration-of-julian-assange
Utterly predictable that the usual media suspects, headed by the discredited BBC, are spinning disinformation about Chris’s case. I’m only surprised that the ABC, usually never backward in smearing the UK Labour Party as ‘anti-Semitic’, apparently hasn’t joined in. No doubt, however, when the EHR brings down a predictable ‘finding’ of a/s against the party, ABC Radio will trot out its Blairite ‘expert’ on the subject to enlighten us all.
i had to read the Graun article twice. the headline contradicts the body of the text. it’s so blatant. i expect they’ve subtly changed the original article when someone pointed that out to them.
when will they run an article about chief antisemitism witch-finder general Margaret Splodge’s family paying no tax? now i see they’re back on the tax avoidance bandwagon
And more and more people will hopefully start to say ‘I could never vote for a Labour Party behaving like this.’
The Labour Party is now like the Democrats in America: utterly disinterested in the very people it was set up to represent.
The Liberal Democrats are now the Autocratic Anti-Democracy party.
Great market opportunity for a party to really represent ordinary people outside London….
Fight the good fight, Kit. This is war, so use Warfarin.
Clear out the rats.
Finalmente!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am one that has a large soft spot for this individual. One of the few politicos that has integrity ,followed by intellectual honesty. Further more his only crime was exposing the political , social and intellectual bankruptcy of his fellow parliamentarians within his party and across the aisle.
It is an interesting fact to consider that the meeting in which Williamson is recorded (shown in the video on this article) also occurred in the same part of the Country as the meeting in a neighbouring Constituency details of which were leaked to the Guardian/Observer in August 2018 (despite a call at the beginning of that meeting for all phones to be switched off).
Particularly in light of the fact that a similar incident involving the same actions/behaviours which form the basis of one of the submitted complaints mentioned below also occurred in the same part of the Country.
Politics is a blood sport. Williamson undoubtedly regards himself as Aristotle’s political animal, and the lobby that has seen fit to exact his ouster has shown him the door. This sort of thing happens all the time in academia. Politics is not much different from my perspective.
UK Parliament has rules of decorum.
MOU
try harder, troll.
Is difference of opinion not allowed in your world?
There are some great articles on OffG, but we are not all Serbs, nor Orthodox, nor Marxists, nor Trotskyists. We are all different, not some identical far left swarm of identikit revolutionaries.
Now stick that in your pipe and smoke it, or if you prefer, you might wish to stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Please.
MOU’s difference of opinion was completely allowed.
He was simply voted down.
One wonders how you can sleep @ nite.
Rules of political decorum when it suits the anglo-zionist hegemomnic agenda of full spectrum dominance.
OLd neapolitan saying Master of the Universe.
Ka nescun e fess.
Translation you ain’t foolin anyone but ur self.
Political decorum ma fammi sto piacere (spare me your empty rhetoric.)
The situation is actually worse than described.
It is not only the case that members deemed “problematic” by decision makers put in place within the bureaucracy during the Blair era are being expelled or disciplined.
Certain complaints submitted are going into a black hole or being dismissed/ignored.
In the early part of 2018 I was presented with information and evidence involving two separate instances of actions and behaviour’s which not only breached Party rules but are illegal. At the same time one of the individuals involved was part of a complaint which was fast tracked through national level withing 48 hours against another Party member. This complaint was being dealt with by Dan Hogan – yes the same Dan Hogan who appeared on the Panorama programme.
I have no way of proving the suspicion that this could have been done via a particular route which I will not speculate on further at this stage.
I submitted two complaints. One to Region, one to the CLP.
Region refused to accept the complaint and despite resubmitting it did nothing. Due to meetings being suspended during the 2018 local election campaign (as per the rules) the CLP did not discuss the situation until early May. As a result both complaints were submitted by the CLP to national level and were initially also dealt with by Dan Hogan
Quite by accident in the late summer of that year I found out that the Complaints Unit Unit had no record of my complaints. Coincidentally, around this time I was also made aware through a separate source that Dan Hogan had left the employ of the Party.
Also coincidentally it seems that whilst my complaints were no longer on the system the other related complaint which had been fast tracked was on the system. Suggesting that a breach of members GDPR and due process rights involving the loss or destruction of inconvenient complaints and public disclosure by the individual former employee dealing with these three complaints and possibly other former employees may have occurred.
As a result I resubmitted and finally seemed to be getting somewhere following Conference – submitting detailed answers with evidence to detailed questions over the autumn.
During the same period I am aware of two further complaints; one involving a breach of confidence and due process in regard to the fast tracked complaint and one involving a deliberate breach of protocol and process in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent a member from access to a particular process. This latter complaint also involving the same individual who was part of the fast tracked complaint.
Both of these complaints were swept under the carpet by Region and other related complaints I am aware of have made no progress at any level.
Also at the same time Chris Williamson was at a Constituency meeting on his democracy roadshow details of which was leaked to the Guardian. It needs to be explained that at the beginning of that meeting the specific request had been made to switch off all cell phones during the meeting. There was a specific reason for this as at least one of the individuals who was involved in the fast tracked complaint (and possibly two others) and who was also one of the subjects of both of my complaints was present.
It also needs explaining that one of my complaints involved (with two witnesses statements from members present) the illicit recording of a private event.
It is now 14 months since I resubmitted two complaints which were originally submitted 17 months ago about events which occurred between 19 and 21 months ago.
Despite writing to the General Secretary over the summer I have heard nothing about the progress of these complaints. I am, however, aware of at least one complaint from within the same time frame which was concluded some months ago.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that certain people are being protected by sections within the bureaucracy whilst other members are pursued with vigour depending on who they are and what contacts they enjoy or otherwise.
Williamson is correct in the conclusion that the Party discipline system is not fit for purpose. I would go further. Based on the experience of myself and others I am aware of it is my considered conclusion that the system is being deliberately abused and gerrymandered for sectarian political purposes by individuals and groups within the Party and the Party bureaucracy.
For obvious reasons Ron Soak is a pseudonym.
As we all know, the UK Labour party has been completely subverted.
The debate then becomes: how do we get the Labour party back to its roots (ie, kick out the Blairites/neo-con scum)?
If Corbyn gets the boot, in the present political climate there’s no one else who can replace him.
We are then left with a choice of either right wing psychopaths or ‘left wing’ psychopaths, which is really no choice.
Think carefully when you vote.
@RobG: “The debate then becomes: how do we get the Labour party back to its roots (ie, kick out the Blairites/neo-con scum)?”
Try Warfarin. It works against rats.
RobG; Vex:
Purging the party of Blairites has been the SQUAWKBOX delusion of the party faithful for years. Any vestigial hope of which evaporated when Corbyn saved Watson from Lansman at Conference. In broad surmise, Corbyn instigated the attempted coup: then bottled it.
Conjecture aside: if ever there was a Regev pet rat: Watson is it. Genuine members of Momentum – serious about founding a broad and Internationalist socialist alliance – need to form a new party. Corbyn could lead it: if and when he finds his principles again. True socialist values are naturally excluded from the toxic arena of Pantomime Politics.
The People are going to have to do a lot more than just anaesthetised voting if they want their country back.
There is a quite different take on that, which is that Lansman’s motion was designed and intended to try and either publicly damage the party (headline – ‘party in turmoil on eve of conference’); or, initiate a party split. A split would leave the Left faction a small and marginalised group, ignored or demonised by the MSM, probably ultimately criminalised.
Lansman is the Labour conduit to the permanent power structure. Corbyn has just been playing a triangulation game and knows that there is no route to socialism proper through British parliamentary ‘democracy’. I agree that this is a failed strategy and merely leads people astray, but Lansman and Watson are on the same side – that being Israel.
-Gilad Atzmon
Yes, you are no doubt correct. And we can rally round the flag that no matter what the behind the scenes strategising is: actually extant socialism is a practico inert force in British politics. With the colonisation of the Labour Party of Israel: UK branch – what, since the declaration of the IHRA – that means that the entire UK (if not the world) political scene is practico inert? It’s capital against the people everywhere.
Bingo/Lotto/House ! 😉
And in terms of politics, well, a National Lottery with or without postcode, seems a perfectly apt description of politics today . . .
With rigged machines and “The History of the National Security State”, who would put their TRUST in such institutions’ algorithms ?
Apart from Corporate Capitalist Captains o’War, transcending sovereign control, with our taxes . . . & censoring us 🙂
“….but Lansman and Watson are on the same side.”
Totally. I felt Lansman did this in order to damage Corbyn. I don’t believe Corbyn had anything to do with it.
Yes, I don’t EVER recall Lansman criticising Tom Watson, so why would he suddeny come up with the idea to abolish the post of Deputy Leader, and just as Conference is starting. Doesn’t make sense of course, unless you KNEW it was going to be all over the MSM and, that JC would ask for it to be withdrawn (as he no doubt would have done if he’d heard about it in advance, but then it wouldn’t have hit the media). And Lansman knew of course that tens of thousands of members on the left would be ecstatic at the prospect of Watson losing his position, and then demoralised and feeling anger towards JC when he intervenes a couple of days later.
It was ALL a stitch-up, of THAT I have no doubt.
We need a socialist movement that is new, fresh and unused, not the old Zionist whore that is today’s Labour Party.
“Think carefully when you vote.”
You mean, “Think carefully which psychopath you’re legitimising by participating in an illegitimate scam and thereby signalling your consent to said scam.”
No, thanks.
The big purge was scheduled for 2017, after May’s expected landslide victory and a Labour wipe out.
Of course things didn’t quite work out that way, much to the chagrin equally of May and the Blairite Backstabbers.
The delayed big purge will probably come soon after the imminent election, maybe in a few weeks time. This is unlikely to end well for Labour.
Ron, what you describe sounds like apparatchniks of Soviet Communist Party. Heaven help England if BLiarites get into power again under cover of a Labour victory!
Clear them out before the Election. Use Warfarin, works against rats.
Warfarin? The anti-coagulation medicine?
Yes, the rats drink it then leave the premises in search of a drink.
How to spot a BLiarat: did the creature vote for war against Serbia, Iraq, Libya or Syria; did the creature vote for Quantitative Easing of Banks too Big to Fail; did the creature cuddle a White Helmet? Does the creature dislike Russia, Iran, Hezb’Allah and Hamas? Does the creature think Labour is AntiSpastic?
Do you want another 20 years of Endless War, Boom and Bust, Austerity and Bailing out the Billionaires — like B.Liar and Brown gave us?
The buggers have declared War, so use Warfarin. Deselect them before the next election.
In case you’re really wondering, the idea is that small, controlled doses help the blood not to coagulate too readily when one is recovering from a stroke, or surgery, where there is increased risk of blood clots in the system.
Rats, given appropriately poisoned food, receive a much higher dose, so that the blood cannot clot at all, with the result that even the most minute capillary damage, due to running or jumping, for example, will cause fatal internal haemorrhage.
Got it. Thanks!
Yes. The so-called political party institutions are rigged and controlled by placemen and place-women having no interest in the ordinary UK public.
In a word, corrupt.
The ‘reality check’ is about how ‘leftism’ has almost been completely destroyed in the West.
Corbyn is a phenomenon I’ve never seen before. He’s a total reaction to four decades of neo-liberal insanity. On the other side of the Pond, Sanders doesn’t come anywhere close. Corbyn will walk another general election (and it should be remembered that Labour party policy under Corbyn breaks all the laws of the neo-liberal EU, about which there’s no honest debate in the UK).
I could bang on about all this, but instead will just say that how the populace of the UK allow themselves to be completely ripped-off is just breathtaking. Energy bills, water bills, rents, mortgages, and all the rest are just Highway Robbery; yet people seem to put up with it?!
The level of propaganda/manipulation that now prevails is quite incredible; likewise with how the general population tolerate this con (and don’t even get me onto the banking system).
It’s perhaps not surprising that I suffer from high blood pressure.
Try vitamin B-12 for the undiagnosed ‘high blood pressure’. I thought I had high blood pressure for years on end until I was diagnosed B-12 deficient due to not eating red meat.
After taking B-12 I was back to normal on the stress/blood pressure conundrum. A lack of vitamin B-12 in the diet leads to reduced red blood cell counts and increased white blood cell counts. Breathing can become impaired from a lack of dietary red meat or B-12 vitamin containing foods.
Most symptomatology of ‘High Blood Pressure’ is diet related & aetiology is causally linked to diet as well.
MOU
Yes I too have high blood pressure which must be aggravated by the unbelievable descent into veritable oceans of absolute bulllshit so routinely vomited up by our wonderful “free press”.
Corbyn is old Labour i.e. the Labour that at least made some effort to help the poor and underprivileged. He doesn’t seem to have much charisma (although that may be a wrong impression created by the servile press) but he does have some integrity. Not that I want to pin too much on him. No-one who gets in to the head position, or anywhere near it, is likely to have much effect on the neoliberal juggernaut.
But the invective against Corbyn is astounding. This moderately left figure is taken to be the fount of all evil, a fanatical extremist. Take the blathering of Scottish composer Sir James Macmillan:
“Corbynistas”? “Bolshevists”? You’d think we were on the verge of revolution. And why? Because Corbyn would propose some modest leftish policies?
Does anyone know if costs were awarded against Labour. If they were, this would cut
through all the bullshit confusing the nuancely challenged.
Interesting thought.
Somehow I imagine the “authorities” would have seen to it that there was a “no costs” clause inserted into the original litigious kerfuffle.
To those people who still doubt the complete Zionist stranglehold over the political life of this country, I would say just two words:-
Chris Williamson
Or Jackie Walker
Or Marc Wadsworth
Or Ken Livingstone
Ot Jeremy Corbin.
The Zionist smear merchants at the Board of Deputies, the Mossad Office, and the Shabbos goys who have both on speed dial, are like poisonous maggots feeding off a body in an advanced state of decay.
Better vote for Farage’s party than? I lost track: are the Zionists running the EU AND the Brexit party too? How about climate change?
So good to have a scape goat.
Defamation of Character ?
Seems worth considering . . .
The media and others such as the Labour party are running riot with peoples reputations at the moment. I think it’s unprecedented. Previously I would generally caution against defamation as it is time consuming and emotionally draining. Having said that if a group of smeared people got together as a group to seek advice and discuss strategies I could see some benefits and advantages.
As for the merits, the allegations you see nowadays don’t appear to be based on honest opinion albeit a wrong one which might be a defence. They seem quite reckless and brazen. Perhaps the time for a group of people to get together is now.
@Loverat: ‘what he said’ …
It is much less emotionally draining, in the collective: thinking of Chris . . . & higher ground.
Some ‘pseudonym’ style of support, cannot suffice in reality.
(see comment from ‘Ron Soak’, above).
People are going to have to learn to start naming names, frankly, standing firmly together.
Not just any ole’ Tom, dick or jeremiah, procrastinations.
I wonder how others respond to Ron Soak: interesting . . .
Self-censorship, effectively, on such matters: ? !
afraid to use his real name, when critically reasoning ?
Very disturbing, Loverat, tough on Chris !
Corbyn must Act, but then be honest,
we knew that ages ago…
A couple of observations:
Organisations certainly use individuals for their own purposes. However, the opposite also occurs in which individuals also use organisations – or even sub or associated/related organisations.
Point being that just because any one or more individuals happens to ‘conveniently’ wear a particular right on label, with that labels support, does not necessarily mean that what the label is supposed to stand for is applicable to any specific individuals who happen to find it ‘convenient’ for various career wise purposes.
All that glitters is not gold as they say.
In the light of heavy speculation about an imminent General Election all Party’s who have not yet completed the process of choosing a candidate to stand for their Party in Parliamentary Constituencies up and down the Country are busy addressing that issue.
In terms of ‘people being looked after’ it will be interesting to look out for who makes particular shortlists in certain parts of these Isles.
Ron, my point exactly. With an election in the offing, and candidates being short listed, now is the time to go down to local office and use Warfarin: deselect any candidate who voted for war against Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Even those who ever shed a tear for the White Helmets, Bana, the Croats, the Kurds or the Kosovans.
The key point being made is there are people in the frame who are only wearing “left wing” views to further their own individual political careers. Going for people on the basis of them making the “right” noises and displaying the “right” opinions in public is not a viable criteria.
Its what happens behind the scenes which reveals what is really going on – only some of which was touched on in the original post above.
In that regard, and in the wider contextual frame in this instance, I’m reasonably confident that the observations made by Robin Ramsey some years ago about the influence on the British Left from across the Atlantic are in play somewhere in the background.
It also seems that Tim Jenkins is owed an answer to a specific question asked.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that in many cases individuals do not always have the luxury of only thinking about themselves. In situations where other people can, and will be, negatively affected by association minimising such real risks for them becomes both a responsibility and a duty.
I have, and never have had, any problem shooting from the hip as long as I’m the only target in the vicinity.
@Ron Soak: ” Going for people on the basis of them making the “right” noises and displaying the “right” opinions in public is not a viable criteria.
Its what happens behind the scenes which reveals what is really going on – only some of which was touched on in the original post above.”
1. Any MP who voted for the rape of Iraq and other BLiarite atrocities will never be missed: the creature was either a fool or a knave or both.
2. Detecting individual conspirators behind the scenes was never my scene; that’s for Spy Catcher. What I am talking about is Open Warfare: the elimination (by deselection) of whole swathes of parliamentary footsoldiers wearing Labour uniform who have publicly declared War on Socialism, War on Truth and War on Peace.
Sad but true…fortunately I’ve already been expelled so I don’t have to worry too much much about what I say anymore, not that I should have ever had to worry about what I said – unless I was some sort of racist weirdo of course.
My crime, according to “whistle-blower” Sam Matthews, who spilled his guts out on the telly in the course of John Ware’s Panorama hatchet-job on the Labour Party, is that I am a “communist.”
Young whipper-snapper Matthews is probably ignorant of the fact that Shapurji Dorabji Saklatvala
MP for Battersea 1924–1929 was a communist elected on a Labour ticket and that the fortunes of the Labour Party and British communists have been inextricably linked to some degree or another since the 1920s.
Had the Labour machine not been able to expel me for Marxist-Leninist thought I’ve no doubt they would have soon settled on my conviction that the two-state solution is a mirage and the sooner the racist colonialist Zionist entity is replaced by a unified secular state, the better.
Ho hum.
Ieuan, tragic (for Labour) that you were expelled from the Party for being a socialist. Even more tragic (for Labour) that you don’t seem heartbroken.
Have you tried joining the Communist Party?
Just, a thought. Why bother joining any party if it doesn’t substantially represent your viewpoint?
Some people say you have no right to express an opinion if you don’t vote but this is just like saying you can only have an opinion of one of the parties. What for example, as with me and probably others here you are faced with no anti war parties (Corbyn might be but Labour substantially are not) and you don’t want to join a ‘fringe’ party. Why support a lesser devil or war criminal? If you really must join or pay a subscription to something, plenty of good causes, non politically tainted activists with distinct viewpoints to support.
Loverat, the age-old answer to that was given by Plato: “You might not be interested in politics but politics sure as hell is interested in you”. — The Republic.