Defend Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone!

Naz Shah is no anti-semite. It is sickening that she should be referred to as such by a Tory Party which does little to silence the racists, Islamophobes and xenophobes in its own ranks and even more sickening that she should be attached by members of her own Party in order that those members can attack Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Naz Shah is the Labour MP for Bradford West. She took the seat from George Galloway at the last General Election and when Jeremy Corbyn MP became Leader of the Labour Party, Ms Shah became Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to John McDonnell MP, Shadow Chancellor. She has now left the post of PPS and been suspended from the Labour Party.

Back in 2014, Ms Shah shared a Facebook post which contained a graphic showing the outline of the state of Israel contained within an outline of the USA and the words “problem solved”. The implication was that if the State of Israel could be removed to the USA (the country which sustains it through generous aid and arms sales), the “problem” of it committing war crimes such as massacring Palestinians would be “solved”.

Ken Livingstone spoke out in her defence – and has also been suspended from the Labour Party. He pointed out that Hitler’s manifesto for the 1932 election in Germany included a policy that Jews should be sent to Palestine (where the Israeli state was established after the Second World War). That is a statement of historical fact, not an anti-semitic comment – but it is being described as anti-semitic by Tories and anti-Corbyn Labour MPs.

Let’s be clear: racism is abhorrent and needs to stop. Specifically, that includes anti-semitism and Islamophobia and treating Black and Asian people as second class citizens in the UK. Condemning the policies of the Israeli state (especially the ones involving genocide and war crimes) is not anti-semitism. Ms Shah was criticising the policies of the existing state (and we are right with her on that one, as are most of the population of Tower Hamlets, including most of the local Labour Party). She was not displaying racism towards people who are Jewish: nor would we, and nor would the vast majority of East Enders.

However, eight Tory MPs announced that this was anti-semitic and called on the Labour Party to take action against Ms Shah. And this raises an interesting question: how did these eight come to notice, and all at the same time, what Ms Shah had on her 2014 Facebook? Have they nothing better to do on a Saturday night than trawl through two years worth of old postings on the Facebook account of a relatively obscure Labour MP?

The revelation came out just before the May elections. What convenient timing for the Conservatives (and all the stranger that they were spending so much time on Facebook – didn’t they have campaigning to do?).

These eight Tory MPs do not seem to have taken time to consider – let alone condemn – statements from their own public representatives which are overtly racist. They were probably too busy on Facebook. Let’s save them some time and remind them what has come from their own Party.

•In a Daily Telegraph article in 2002, Boris Johnson (Mayor of London and Tory MP) said that the Commonwealth supplied the Queen with “cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies” and referred to the crowds having “watermelon smiles”. The article was not pulled by any editorial procedures at the Telegraph. In 2008, Johnson said he was “sad” people were offended.
In April 2008, Boris Johnson apologised for printing, when he was editor of The Spectator, an article stating that black people have lower IQs than white people and made racist comments about black basketball players.
In 2015, Boris Johnson was deemed fit, by the Conservative Party, to stand as a Tory candidate for Parliament.

•Oliver Letwin, a Conservative Adviser to Margaret Thatcher, wrote the then PM a memo about the Broadwater Farm riots which blamed black people for rioting and said there was no point in assisting black people to go into business as they would only work in the “disco and drug” trades. When the memo was made public in 2015, Letwin apologised for the wording used in the old document. He is still a Tory MP.

•In May last year, David Bishop, a Tory council candidate in Brentwood South, resigned from the Tory Party after posting anti-Islamic and homophobic tweets.

•In December last year, Cllr Bill Sharp, Deputy Leader of Castle Point Council, tweeted that Donald Trump had made the right move by calling for a ban on Muslims being allowed to go to the USA. He justified his support by stating that “a short term control as suggested will be safer for both Americans and Muslim immigrants.”

And so it goes on.

What is happening now is an attack on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party by his enemies in other parties and his own. Will they get away with it? That’s up to the voters to decide. Will the voters fall for a short-term tactic to help weaken Corbyn? Certainly many will find it hard to vote for Saddiq Khan in London, who has shown his Blairite credentials by calling for Livingstone to be suspended. Others will see through the attack and will insist on voting Labour to put this nasty little campaign back in its box.

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•For a substantive article on how the campaign to attack Labour as anti-Zionist is being run, go to:
https://bookburnersrus.wordpress.com/2016/04/18/are-you-or-have-you-ever-been-an-antizionist/