I’m a longstanding, active and pretty opinionated member of the labour movement, so it goes without saying that I must have a fixed and unambiguous view on the whole drama over anti-Semitism that has dogged the Labour Party for half a decade now — and, as a result of yesterday’s decision to suspend Jeremy Corbyn, looks set to explode into a full-scale internecine conflict.
Except that, well, I don’t. By which I do not mean that I don’t have any views at all on the issue; more that the opinions I hold are the kind which are ignored or dismissed by most in the party, because they can’t easily be co-opted by either of the two warring tribes (and therefore leads both to regard me as some kind of faintheart or enemy).
After 26 years of activity in the labour movement, there are some things about which I am sure. One is that there is a strain of the Left — mainly embedded within the far-Left — that is anti-Semitic, virulently so, in some cases. It is small, but it exists. It will often cloak its anti-Semitism in criticism of Israel. Indeed, its obsession with the transgressions of that small country, when the misdeeds of certain other nations are more numerous and at least as bad, leads one to conclude that there is something else going on. Occasionally, it will lay bare its true beliefs with swivel-eyed rantings about “Zionist” control over the media or financial system. It is, quite frankly, comprised of irreconcilable extremists who are beyond reason.
I think it reasonable to conclude that the election of Corbyn as Labour leader, and the concomitant upsurge in far-Left influence and activity, led to a growth in the number of these crackpots infecting the party’s ranks. And, from my own vantage point inside the party, I saw that they were not identified and expelled with anything like sufficient vigour.
I know, too, that while most who raised concerns about anti-Semitism inside the party were well-meaning and justified, a small number chose to weaponise the issue because they loathed Corbynism and wanted rid of it. To say so is regarded as heresy in some quarters, but you don’t have to be a Corbynite to recognise that there has been some degree of naked politicking in this debate. It is idle to pretend otherwise. This politicking by a minority has served to create something of an accusatory — and deeply unpleasant — atmosphere across the Left which, on occasion, saw legitimate vigilance and a desire to clean the stables develop into hyper-sensitivity and recrimination.
I experienced this first-hand last year. In a Twitter debate over free movement with the folk singer Mike Harding, I argued that Britain’s working class was rooted, communitarian and patriotic whereas its middle class was more rootless, cosmopolitan and bohemian. The debate had absolutely nothing to do with Jews or Jewishness in any way, but when some anorak pointed out that Jewish intellectuals were referred to as “rootless cosmopolitans” in Stalin’s Russia, I was condemned by some on the Left as an anti-Semite.
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