FOLLOWING hard on the heels of last week’s hatchet job carried out by the BBC Panorama programme, the Labour Party right wing have launched their major attack on the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn based on lying and unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism.
Yesterday, a full-page advert appeared in the Guardian newspaper signed by 67 Labour peers accusing Corbyn of ‘leaving a legacy of anti-Semitism’ in the party and of having ‘failed the test of leadership’. They want a new leader and have produced a ‘bombshell’ for the crisis shadow cabinet meeting on Monday. The text of the advert starts with the ludicrous assertion that: ‘The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (*except, it seems, Jews)’ before proclaiming, ‘This is your legacy Mr Corbyn.’
According to these peers: ‘Labour is no longer a safe place for all members and supporters, whatever their ethnicity or faith. Thousands have resigned and thousands more feel unable to attend party meetings because of the toxic culture you have allowed to divide our movement.’
In fact, the only ones who live in fear are right-wing Labour MPs in terror of de-selection under new party rules making MPs more accountable to their local parties.
The letter states: ‘We are not asking if you are an anti-Semite. We are saying you are accountable as Leader for allowing anti-Semitism to grow in our party and presiding over the most shaming period in Labour’s history.’
In fact, the most ‘shaming period in Labour’s history’ took place under the ‘New Labour’ government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown with its illegal wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia – wars that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. These wars were fully supported by a number of the signatories to this letter, including the reviled Blairite architect of ‘New Labour’, Peter Mandelson.
In 2017, Mandelson told the Jewish Chronicle that he resented the fact that Corbyn was not carrying on the right-wing Blairite policies of ‘New Labour’ and that ‘I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his tenure in office.’
No mention of anti-Semitism here, just an open desire to destroy Corbyn and the Labour Party. This is what is behind this scurrilous Guardian ad from a motley collection of old MPs and ex-trade union leaders ennobled by Blair and Brown and sent off to the Lords where they have to exist on a meagre £305 a day (plus expenses) just for turning up.
The full page declaration is clearly in preparation for an emergency meeting of the shadow cabinet on Monday to discuss the allegations of anti-Semitism in the party. This meeting is planned by the right-wing to erupt into a split in the Labour Party, a split that they intend will destroy any prospect of a Labour government being elected.
The timing of this split orchestrated by the state through the BBC and by Labour’s Blairite right-wing remnants comes as a minority Tory government prepares to impose another unelected Prime Minister on the country, a move that they fear will cause a motion of no confidence in the Tories, leading to a crisis emergency general election. Such an election would see the Tories annihilated.
For the capitalist state and its right-wing lap-dogs in the Labour ranks, an election of a Corbyn government propelled into office by a working class determined to break with the EU and end austerity must be prevented at all costs.
The plan is to split the Labour Party with the right wing joining with Tories and LibDems in a unity government of national emergency to impose the will of the bankers, remain in the EU and accelerate the austerity demands of bankrupt British capitalism on the working class.
The working class must now demand that union leaders like Len McCluskey of Unite, who have denounced Watson and the plans to split the Labour Party, now take action by mobilising the full strength of the movement to kick out every one of these right-wing traitors and close down the unelected Lords. The unions must organise a general strike to bring down the Tories and bar the way to any national government by advancing to a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers, break with the EU and advance to socialism.
