WEDNESDAY night’s Panorama programme ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ marks a new and increasingly desperate stage in the state-orchestrated witch-hunt of Jeremy Corbyn with the aim of splitting the Labour Party and destroying the prospect of a future Corbyn-led Labour government.
The fact that the BBC devoted an hour to broadcast a mass of unsubstantiated accusations from eight former party employees known to have been hostile to Corbyn’s election as leader and who subsequently resigned clearly shows the preparations being made for a possible crisis general election which the state is determined Corbyn will not win.
The accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are nothing new. Ever since he was elected leader, the right-wing pro-Zionist wing of the Labour Party have tried to smear him as a racist and indeed suddenly discovered, immediately he was elected, that almost the entire Labour membership, apart from themselves of course, were closet racists and anti-Semites.
In this campaign to oust Corbyn, they were enthusiastically joined by the bourgeois press and media and now the state-owned BBC has entered the fray with a vengeance.
Clearly the state is worried that all the previous attempts have proved to be totally inadequate for the job as ordinary Labour Party members and workers are only too aware that the right wingers pushing this shameful smear are the very ones who have never uttered a word about the murderous racism of the Zionist state of Israel.
While Jeremy Corbyn, to his credit, has a long history since his election as an MP of speaking out against all forms of racism including the murder by Israeli forces of thousands of unarmed Palestinians, there has been nothing but a deafening silence on Israeli atrocities from his enemies.
Indeed for them, Corbyn is an anti-Semite because he condemns Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people! Compounding this is the fact that Labour under Corbyn fought the last general election pledging to recognise the State of Palestine, earning him the hatred of the Zionists and of the British state, which is arming Israel to the teeth.
What is really worrying the ruling class and its state is that they cannot rely on a Corbyn government that will be swept into power by a working class that hates capitalist austerity and will demand that a Labour government fulfils its pledges to restore jobs, living standards and re-nationalise state assets sold-off in the past.
This is the reason behind the latest frenzied attacks on Corbyn and his closest supporters. The man chosen to spearhead the splitting of the Labour Party and make it unelectable is the party’s deputy leader Tom Watson.
Yesterday morning, Watson was all over the media describing the Panorama programme as ‘chilling’ because it highlighted the ‘permissive culture’ towards vile abuse in the party, before he went on to his real aim when he gave his fulsome support to a proposal of automatic exclusion of any member accused of ‘anti-Jewish racism’.
What Watson wants is to expel anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly support the racist Zionist regime against the Palestinians and their struggle for an independent state. Watson would certainly include Corbyn in this cull.
The ultimate aim of Watson and the right wing is to split the Labour Party completely and out of this will emerge a new reactionary political formation, a new party (led by Watson perhaps) that will join up with the crumbling remnants of the Tory Party to emerge as a coalition government.
The treacherous Watson wants a national government not a Labour government and he is working hand-in-glove with the state to ensure this happens.
The working class must use its power to put an end to these plots designed to ensure that capitalism has a chance of surviving the collapse of the Tory Party by moving to a new form of rule through a right wing coalition government.
Workers must demand that the TUC take action by calling a general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers’ government that will implement socialist policies of expropriating the bosses and bankers under a socialist economy, break immediately with the EU and give full economic and material support to the independent State of Palestine.
