September 21, 2024 - 8:00am
Fresh from promoting her autobiography, A Woman Like Me, on Sunday the MP Diane Abbott is due to address a Labour Party Conference fringe event. The meeting is to be held by a group that she serves as president, Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), which achieved prominence by organising demonstrations attended by thousands in the wake of riots triggered by the murders of three children in Southport at the end of July.
Also billed to appear are the Corbynite MPs Richard Burgon and Bell Ribeiro-Addy, and former Labour National Executive Committee member Mish Rahman. The meeting’s title in the conference programme is “Why a Labour government must challenge racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism”. However, none of those slated to speak are Jewish.
This may not be surprising, for recent SUTR protests have featured expressions of views on subjects relevant to Jews that many would consider extreme, such as repeated claims that “Zionists” were behind the post-Southport riots. SUTR has also forged close links with Anas Altikriti, the CEO and founder of the Cordoba Foundation, who openly welcomed the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October last year and earlier supported armed “resistance” to British and American forces in Iraq.
SUTR was founded by members of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party in 2013, but took a big step towards the British political mainstream after the riots. On 7 August, it issued a “unity statement” urging people to “to drive back the fascists” that was signed by the leaders of 11 big trade unions, including ASLEF, Unison and Unite. SUTR demonstrations followed in cities across the country.
The statement included a call to “stand up to antisemitism”. But although the protest rallies’ ostensible purpose was to expose the supposed role of the far-Right in the riots, they also focused on the Israel–Palestine conflict. Speakers at several SUTR events last month blamed “Zionists” for the riots. For example, addressing protesters in Birmingham on 17 August, Abdullah Saif, from the Muslim campaign group MEND, told his audience that Zionism had a “massive role” in “platforming the far-Right narrative” that triggered them, as it was “fully documented” that “the likes of Tommy Robinson are funded by Zionists”.
The claim that Robinson and others who had instigated the disorder were funded and controlled by Zionists was also made by platform speakers in several other English cities. In Newcastle, the journalist Yvonne Ridley suggested on 10 August that Robinson was “Israel’s poster boy”, instructed by his paymasters to foment the riots in order to “knock Gaza off the front pages”. She was joined by Chandi Chopra, chair of the Newcastle Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who said that “the Zionist squatter enemy” was the reason why “we are seeing racism against predominantly Muslim communities” in Britain.
SUTR announced on 29 August that its leaders had been “delighted” to attend the launch of another organisation fronted by Altikriti, the Islamophobia Action Group, stating on social media that the riots had underlined the case for urgent action to deal with this form of racism.
Indeed, Altikriti’s links to SUTR go back at least to 2017. He also spoke at an SUTR rally in Harrow in northwest London on 7 August, where he said that Robinson and the rest of the far-Right were “directly linked to the Zionist state of Israel”, and that the riots were their “payback for Gaza” — by which, he said, they meant to “punish” Britons who had protested against Israel’s conduct of the war.
Altikriti has long been a controversial figure. His father Osama was a leader of the Iraqi branch of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and Anas said in 2004 that the “struggle of the Iraqi people, militarily and politically, must continue until the occupier leaves”. At the time, Iraqi insurgents were killing substantial numbers of British and American troops. He has visited the Hamas leadership in Gaza, posting photos of himself with its late leader Ismail Haniyeh. In 2014 he asked online “where pro-Israel Jewish Brits’ loyalties lie, whether with Britain or Israel”?
On the day after last October’s massacre, Altikriti signed a statement that affirmed Palestinians’ “inalienable right” to “armed struggle”, said “acts of the Palestinian resistance” should not be described as “terrorism”, and demanded “the dismantling of the settler-colonialist state of Israel”. He also supported the taking of Israeli hostages, calling this “a very important part of any strategic military action or act of resistance”, while he has denied that Hamas fighters committed rapes.
Daniel Sugarman, the public affairs director of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, suggested on X this week that not having Jewish speakers at the upcoming SUTR fringe meeting was a “small mercy”. Given the organisation’s record, it seems he has a point.
A flyer issued by SUTR on Saturday, 21 September mentioned further speakers in addition to those named in the conference programme, including Edie Friedman, describing her as a Jewish race equality and refugee rights campaigner.
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SubscribeWell of course it will be ignoring anti-semitism. As David Baddiel pointed out some time ago and which has become blindlingly obvious to the rest of us ever since, Jews Don’t Count.
Pretty much every activist on the political Left has now lost their moral alibi on the subject of racism. They don’t oppose racism; they oppose racism towards their own favoured groups only. And Jews and Israel aren’t included.
Which is, ironically, racist.
Yes indeed, and they’re also rancidly racist towards White people.
Rubbish. The majority of the political spectrum and media pump out nothing but uncritical pro Zionist propaganda.
You forgot the second letter in your surname. An “R “ is missing.
Onanist
Since when have Jews been identified with a particular “race”? Being anti-Jewish may be bigoted, but it is not racist per se. And being anti-Zionist is a perfectly acceptable and moral mainstream political stance like anti-communism or anti-fascism. Zionists, in their typical dishonest way, are trying to fix the “racist” tag on their critics. Some dopes even fall for it.
“Since when have Jews been identified with a particular “race”?”
Are you actually serious?! Good heavens!! We really do have a serious antisemitism problem in the UK. It appears worse than I thought.
Jail for thee, but not for me.
SUTR think only white people can be racist.
A 17 year old Black male stabbing to death 3 white girls and injuring many more is not a racist attack, because Black people selecting white people to kill can’t possibly be racist.
If it was racist, then SUTR would condemn the killings.
But they haven’t, so what more proof is needed that the killings were not racist.
Would a 17 year old white male selecting little Black girls to kill at a Beyonce themed party be accused of racism? I think he might!
You’re right, but please stop capitalising “black” while not capitialising “White”.
The people who fight against racism have decreed that white people are so diverse and have such different cultures to each other that they don’t count as a group, while Black people all around the world are pretty much the same culture.
Sounds a bit racist to me 🙂
https://blog.ap.org/announcements/why-we-will-lowercase-white
See previous comment.
You must be kidding about the idea that some people think all black culture is the same. That is profoundly ignorant, not to mention racist.
I think you’re both in agreement here. Maybe a misreading of the comment.
The comment was not clearly written. There was no intent to infer Steven was pushing racist tropes. Whomever Steven was quoting was, IMHO, pushing racist tropes. Apologies without reservation for any wrong impression.
To my mind, there’s some work of conceptual distinction to be done that isn’t too taxing. Racism today is a construction of the left, spanning the mainstream political class who object to people criticising the UK’s ropy multicultural model.
The most potent anti-Semitism today stands on its own as a trope pursued by the anti-Israel left and those who produce traditional anti-capitalist conspiracy theories about Jews.
The Right could weaponise this anti-Semitism against the Left if it so wished, especially when the Left call it anti-Zionism which is a phrase sounding like it belongs in Interwar F-scist Europe. And they would be entitled to do so as long as this mirror concept of Islamphobia floats around to deflect critiques of communitarianism in a two-tier UK.
Any movement that believes only white people can be racist is in itself racist.
Quite. Might as well call themselves SUFR.
SUTR is patently a front organisation for the Socialist Workers Party. Even the type face on their posters is the same as it was on the 1970s/ early 80s, when I was an undergraduate. They claimed to be against racism then, although the policies they advocated would have exacerbated racial tensions.
Under the thin veneer they were violent thugs. I used to take part in a prolife stall at union events, and they would stand in front to stop anyone speaking to us, or take handfuls of literature and throw it away. One of them once told me “when we take power, people like you will be the first we kill”. He was in deadly earnest.
I posted many times on here and elsewhere that giving freedom to enemies of freedom in the West would end up like pre revolution Russia.
If Tsars dealt with lefties like Communists dealt with their enemies, we would not had had Soviet Union.
I always have mega downvotes for saying this.
Reality is that Franco and Pinochet showed clearly that you can not reason with lefty vermin.
But uk government jails people for tweets while allowing real enemies to carry on.
Come on, don’t be shy – we all know who your real “anti-lefty-vermin” idol is, so why leave him out?
Stand Up to Racism has nothing whatever to do with racism. It is a collection of hard-left agitators working hard to divide society and destroy democracy. It is a mere cover, using a serious issue to disguise its own warped ends and make use of people too naive to recognise its true nature.
Leftists love the most violent groups. BLM, Hamas, Hezbollah and their supporters in the diaspora.They’re like the skinny kids siding with the schoolyard bullies. Presumably in the hope that craven appeasement will keep them safe.
“Jews Don’t Count” in the UK because they’re too small in number and too peaceful. You don’t see groups of young Jewish men driving around Muslim neighbourhoods threatening rape and murder, but the opposite has happened repeatedly and been tolerated.
The SWP is. a pro-rape cult. Everything they touch is poison. They should be called NSWP. N for Nazional.
Anas Altikriti is not a controversial figure. He’s a theocratic fascist.
Answer to the title is an emphatic yes.
Obvious considering which segment of the left they are drawn from so no real need for this article
I’ve seen Israelis told to “go home to Europe” on twitter. That just sums up the hypocrisy.
Don’t take it wrong way, but we would swap your people for Muslim and African savages.
I understand though that based on historical experience Jews need their own country.
Well that’s not the point as some Jews are also African. The point is Israelis are regularly told by “far-left” activists to go back to where they came from. Such extreme hypocrisy.
Tommy Robinson may not have stirred up the riots, but he is undoubtedly financed by US Jewish Zionists with a clear agenda to forment anti-muslim sentiment. unbelievably, this was actually acknowledged in the traditional media at the time of the riots, although without comment.
If we substituted say, Russian, for US Jewish Zionist, there would be all hell to pay as there was at the mere accusation of Russian money for Farage. When the foreigners are US Zionists however, and it is a fact beyond doubt, no problem at all. Voltaire was absolutely right about what to do if you wanted to know who is in charge.
Can’t say l’m a big fan of Robinson, his supporters or his views but l’m curious what credible evidence you have to support your claims.
Or maybe you’re just one of those tedious bores who mindlessly claim anyone to the right of Lenin is a fascist or far right.
His financing is not a secret, but even the Sunday Times run an article about it in August.
So Tommy Robinson made up the grooming ganga at the behest off the American zionists. And the rioters had no agency or legitimate beef.
Sounds like you have an awesome tinfoil hat
There is nothing that you attribute to me in your comment that I have claimed. I have merely pointed out that Tommy Robinson’s financing attracts no comment from the same people who scream blue murder if they suspect Farage or pals of getting any Russian money.
Your inability to read what I have written and instead comment about stuff that I haven’t speaks volumes about your own capacities.