As for the ‘Zionist lobby’ slur: Not worth a response.

Do you have anything relevant to say about BRICUP’s and UCU’s support of the hate-speaker Masuku?

1. Judy’s fantasy description of the politics of my father Lionel Rose (who died young, 60 years ago – so the ‘Dave Renton’ she cites could not have known him) beggars belief. My entire extended family was Zionist – and regrettably some still are. Lionel served in the British army in Palestine, and subsequently Italy. When demobbed he became secretary of the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in London, and then full time antifascist organiser and speaker for AJEX, supported by the Board of Deputies. I do not know whether his links with Zionist military figures such as Ezer Weizman, of whom he often spoke, were made during his time in Palestine or later. Like many middle class Jews he voted for Labour as less anti-semitic than the Conservatives. But the tension between class interest and the need to fight anti-Semitism was evident. The only newspapers that came into the house were the Daily Express and the JC.

2. Yes I was brought up orthodox (though we were allowed to switch on our own lights on shabbas) and I was indeed barmitzvah – in the temporary shul opposite our then house in Edgware (where my father was often minyan man) before the more permanent shul was built in the 60s. If only my family had been secular leftist I would have been spared endless Saturday mornings in shul and Sundays in Hebrew classes! I first went to Israel in 1958 to visit family and stay on a kibbutz. To my shame it was not until the 1970s that I understood Israel as a colonial society whose settlers had forcibly expropriated the indigenous population. And that the cry of a land without people for a people for a people with out land was nothing more or less than the usual claim of colonisers whether in North America, the Antipodes or Palestine.

3, Judy seems to have met my younger brother Nik in a CP group in the 1970s and spoke of me with him – so why didn’t she even call him to check out her “ facts” before making wild guesses. Although I have been a member of the (Old) Labour Party I have never been a member of any other party (and that goes for Judy’s CP). The political background of Hilary’s family -left wing but clear eyed about the show trials gave her a profound distrust of the CP with its uncritical admiration of the USSR. Lacking any self evidently convincing party to join (though we were both attracted by a libertarian Maoism; alas the UK variants were more Stalinist than anarchist) my political interests have therefore been focussed on single issue campaigns -mostly relating to science. Hilary was more fortunate in that the women’s movement and feminism were opening up a whole new world. From the radical science movement to the current boycott campaign which she and I initiated in 2002 Hilary and I have worked with activists from most progressive political parties. For non-aligned single issue campaigners this has its pluses and its minuses. Judy may dislike our political positions, but she has no business either traducing my father or fantasising about my childhood.

Before implies you will get round to it, in your own time.

You have no intention of getting onto the agenda of an event which is imminently taking place in London, tonight, not after, not at all.