The problem for the left today is that it has gone over largely—but not, Geras and others insisted, wholly—to the negative view of Judaism as an obstacle to human progress. Israel, Geras held, “has been an alibi for a new climate of anti-Semitism on the left,” a development whose full venomousness can only be seen in Europe. (“I don’t think people here realize,” he said mournfully, “what it’s like to be a Jewish leftist in Britain today,” comparing it to living in a sea of poison.) This is the atmosphere that the Anglo-Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson evoked so powerfully in his recent novel The Finkler Question: one in which hostility to Israel is a reflex and insinuations about Jewish power and the “Jewish lobby” go unchallenged.

If the left in Europe and, increasingly, the United States is so hospitable to anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic ideas, what does that mean for the future of “Jews and the Left”? Michael Walzer explained the historical Jewish affinity for the left as a straightforward matter: “We have supported the people who support us.” The historical insights of the “Jews and the Left” conference suggested that things were never so simple—or mutual. So, when that basic equation no longer holds—if the left are no longer “the people who support us”—will we continue to support them? The “rising generation” of the left will contain its share of Jews, maybe even more than its share; but whether it will be a Jewish left, as it was in the past, is very much in doubt.

The sign says “There isn’t a non-socialist Left.”

The demonstration concluded with the singing of “The Internationale” and the Israeli national anthem “HaTikvah.”

Update: Ronnie Fraser provides a fascinating report from the labour attaché at the British embassy in Tel Aviv on May Day activities in Israel in 1955– when apparently it was a really big deal:

The International Labour Day celebrations in Israel yesterday passed off fairly uneventfully. There were parades in numerous towns as far south as Beersheba but the major events were, of course, in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The turnout at Haifa, which is the main Industrial centre of the country, was estimated at 45,000 and in Tel Aviv at about 30,000. At the invitation of the Histadrut, the American Labour Attaché and I were on the platform in Tel Aviv to watch the march-past.

On this occasion there had been agreement beforehand that the various Parties represented in the Histadrut should combine in one single parade instead of having the factional demonstrations which have occurred on some previous occasions. There was also agreement about the wording of the slogans which might be used by the various Parties and that no other slogans would be used in the procession. In the event, the political section of the Tel Aviv parade comprised 130 members each of Mapai, L’Ahdut Ha’Avodah and Mapam. It was not clear beforehand how far the Communists would be represented, but they turned up in the middle of the procession. I shall refer to them again in a moment. As might have been expected, the General Zionists, although they are putting up their own lists for the first time in the Histadrut elections this year, were not represented in the parade. This is, of course, a logical manifestation of their beliefs but it had been thought in some quarters that they might, nevertheless, put in an appearance in order to publicise themselves within the Histadrut movement in preparation for next Sunday’s elections.

The form of the Tel Aviv procession followed the usual lines. At the head were the Minister of Labour (Mrs. Golda Myerson), the Secretary-General of the Histadrut and those members of its Executive Bureau who were not guests in other towns. These dignitaries left the procession when they reached the platform where they joined the visitors to watch the parade for nearly three-and-a- half hours.

The political contingents which I have mentioned above were followed by groups and “floats” representing various trades and industries and the numberless co-operatives within the Histadrut organisation. Then came a very long succession of contingents from the various kibbutzim and youth movements affiliated to the working class movement. In fact, the purely trade union elements of the parade were quite dwarfed by the emphasis on youth and the colonisation of the land, especially the Negev. The atmosphere was in fact distinctly Israeli. Finally, the procession was rounded off by a series of floats staged by Solel Boneh, the large Histadrut enterprise which started off as the organisation’s building and contracting organisation but which now has its finger in all sorts of industrial pies.

There was a substantial public turnout to witness the procession and the streets were alive with Israel national flags and red flags. The latter seem to have caused some consternation to some of the visiting American ladies in the town and on more than one occasion I heard people explaining to them very patiently that the red flag was the universal symbol of working-class movements long before its special association with the Communist Party. There was, however, little in the way of significant events or features. There was some surprise on the platform to find the contingent of the local Communist Party in the middle of the parade since people expected to find it, if at all, either in the political section at the front or near the end. I was later informed, however, that at some point this body had forced itself into the middle of the parade and the organisers had not thought it worthwhile to risk unpleasant incidents but had allowed them to carry on (the word “forced” is perhaps not altogether appropriate since there were frequent long gaps in the procession and I should not think the Communists would have had much difficulty in infiltrating into a position which suited them. I was interested to note three Arabs in the Mapam section of the procession and, at a later stage, there was quite a sprinkling of Arabs in various youth and similar groups but, again, mostly in those affiliated to Mapam. One or two of the young people’s groups did in fact call out slogans which had not been agreed beforehand and, in particular, the usual sort of references to the “bourgeoisie”. A Histadrut official remarked to me that probably no two of them had the same definition of this overworked word.

The parades in Haifa and Jerusalem seem to have been carried out on very similar lines but there was in each case a minor incident which may be worth mentioning. In Jerusalem the Mapam delegation from the Corridor called out “Long Live Peace, Long Live the U.S.S.R.” as they strode past carrying red flags topped with Picasso doves. In Haifa, when the Mayor, the Secretary of the local Labour Council and other local dignitaries took their seats the stage collapsed. No-one was hurt. Later, when the Communist contingent reached what was left of the stage they unfurled their own slogans, Mr, Almogi, Secretary of the Haifa Labour Council, and a tough customer by any standards, ordered the blue-shirted ushers to take them down. Within a few
minutes and after a few blows, the offending slogans were removed.

Many of you will have come up with theories that seek to answer that question. Here are some of mine.

1. The rise of “Palestinian solidarity” politics on the Left has resulted in a need to deny antisemitism (and also homophobia). It would simply be unacceptable to show solidarity and to assist political parties which were murderously homophobic and genocidally antisemitic. Accordingly, Nelsonian blindness is the attitude to hate preachers and terrorist movements, and huge energy has been put into attacking anybody who points this out.

Livingstone’s Qaradawi Dossier is a prime example of that, as is the conduct of The Guardian over the Raed Salah affair.

2. The “Durban Strategy” of 2001’s World Conference Against Racism has been deployed, successfully, against Israelis: who have become contemporary Afrikaaners, in the eyes of many: though not all.

The strategy has bled sideways. Jews, who overwhelmingly support the continued existence of Israel, where half the surviving Jewish population of the world now lives, are identified as proto-Israelis. It has also evolved. Jews are now thought to be the ‘new Nazis’ who ‘learnt from their oppressors’. The logic that the Durban Strategy would have you accept is this: Apartheid states must be destroyed, and Nazis must be eliminated.

3. Most people, including self-described ‘progressives’ have no understanding of antisemitism, its history, its forms, and how deeply it is embedded in our culture. Many don’t even recognise it. There are many people, for example, who would think that the notion that Jews control the media, governments, and the financial system was simply a statement of fact, rather than a wicked canard.

The same is true, incidentally, of homophobia. We have seen how quickly the mask slips.

The consequence of this failure of recognition is that homophobia and antisemitism is belittled, and indeed tolerated, within an aspect of ‘progressive’ culture.

4. As Palestinian solidarity activists have become embedded within the Left, the ‘habit’ of accusing Jews who object to genocidal antisemitism, or gays who are concerned about a rise in homophobic hatred, of lying about their concerns has entered the mainstream. There are peers, MPs and even Labour Shadow Ministers who are active in a movement which routinely dismisses and belittles concerns about hatred. This is a ‘progressive’ position.

5. Activists from Islamist political parties – including very extreme ones, such as the IFE – have become the backbone of a number of anti-racism and anti-Islamophobia campaigns. This network is very strong. It includes, for example, London Citizens.

To some degree, there has been governmental encouragement of alliances with Islamist organisations. As we know, the former police spy Bob Lambert was a much respected advocate of this policy.

Similarly, as is well known, a number of tiny far Left political parties run a range of progressive organisations, in which the exercise executive authority and exert a general gravitational pull on the politics of these organisations.

6. Why, you might ask, has there been so little opposition to this nasty turn of events. The answer is structural.

Once mainstream organisations have adopted this politics, activists within them have three options:

- to make a fuss about it

- to stay quiet

- to attack those criticising the organisation as racists, hatemongers, Islamophobes, Zionists, and liars.

Some, to their credit, have made a fuss about alliances with Islamists, or the tolerance of racism. A few of those have had their careers or reputations wrecked, as a result.

Most who disapprove, therefore stay silent. The trouble is,  you can’t admit that your own organisation’s political allies – particularly in ‘the fight against racism’ – are themselves fanatical bigots and extremists, or their trusty allies. So, as a result, we’re seeing a deliberate, institutionalised, closing of the eyes to racism against Jews and in some cases, to homophobia.

7. The fear of being thought a racist or a right winger means that nobody organises or agitates around the issue. Other, really, than some Jewish organisations (pretty discretely) and a number of outspoken Muslims, Christians and Atheists, there has been a resounding silence. Anti-racist organisations which should really have been at the forefront of confronting the pushing of hatred have, by and large, stayed silent.

8. In the main, Jewish organisations will not make a fuss about antisemitism. This is not necessarily a silly position to take. Jews are perceived to be griping about antisemitism all the time, and so Jewish organisations are inclined not to feed the myth, by doing so loudly. Jews have learnt that complaining about antisemitism makes more enemies than friends. This is so, particularly as they know that they’ll be accused of lying when they do raise concerns.

Instead, they pursue quietism. The greater the hatred and incitement, the quieter they get. The energy shifts to building partnerships with government, to provide for security measures to protect Jewish schools from massacres.

By contrast, Jews who are members of organisations which deny antisemitism are very active and vocal.

A small but passionate number of Christians, Muslims and Atheists (and other religious groups, too) are genuinely opposed to antisemitism, and are horrified by what racism is doing to progressive politics, and to the country. They’re treated with suspicion and significantly ignored: by Jewish organisations.

9. The emergence of Muslim electoral blocs in cities that must be courted, has also resulted in a tolerance of extremism, homophobia and antisemitism. I don’t think that this is by any means a decisive element, but has some influence on national trends. It is one of a number of factors.

Again, to object to such a sectarian politics is to be attacked, in return, as a racist. That it is not criticised means that well meaning politicians, dignitaries and public figures end up on platforms with Holocaust denying hatemongers or get pictured shaking hands with clerics who preach that captured women can be taken as concubines, while gays have to be thrown off walls. Once these alliances are forged, they’re almost impossible to break. Nobody lightly admits that they have made an error of judgement.

The important exception to this pattern is, of course, the reasonably widespread understanding of the problem of Ken Livingstone’s dodgy views and his dodgier mates. So, the question will be: do such alliances bring a net electoral benefit? Put simply, will you win more votes being pictured with a man who calls for female genital mutilation than you will speaking out against him? We will soon find out.

10. Finally: we do not have a dominant self-confident liberal culture. It means that we don’t challenge racism and hatred and, worse still, we don’t offer an attractive alternative to pessimism and bigotry. But we can, and we should.

All of this could be turned around. The problem is organisational. We got to where we are because our opponents worked harder.

What do you think?

Since the nineteenth century, Jews have played prominent roles in a variety of leftist political movements. At the same time, associations between Jews and communism have been a frequent leitmotif of antisemitic thinking. While the political Left often spoke out against antisemitism and promised Jews tolerance and an end to distinctions between Jews and non-Jews, specific, prominent, leftists espoused antisemitic ideas. In addition, Jews cultivated their own, uniquely Jewish, socialist parties and ideologies. In recent years, the relationship between Jews and the Left has been further complicated by left-wing opposition to the State of Israel and debates about the extent to which this opposition bleeds into outright antisemitism. YIVO , in association with [the American Jewish Historical Society], will bring together historians, political scientists, philosophers, and journalists from Europe, Israel, and America to discuss some of the important topics pertaining to the relationship between Jews and the Left.

Among the participants will be Norman Geras (of normblog), Paul Berman, Michael Walzer and Ronald Radosh.

Think this is a joke?

Read these extracts from Ken and the rise of Socialist Action

In October 2007, the Evening Standard published a list of the 25 most influential people running London.[1] Livingstone headed the list which contained the names of 13 other individuals who worked directly or indirectly for the mayor, four of the people on the list were Livingstone’s closest mayoral advisory they have also been members of a tiny Trotskyist party which has worked closely and discreetly with Ken Livingstone for more than 20 years.

Socialist Action is an organisation so discreet and secretive that it does not even admit its own existence and its members will not confirm they have ever belonged to the group. When I interviewed Ken Livingstone about Socialist Action for this book, he pressed me for evidence at first, before acknowledging its existence and the importance of the role played by those who had been associated with it . It has a website and it has a printing press and those who have been associated with it have enjoyed great influence over London.

By my calculation, at least five of the mayor’s advisors are or have been members of Socialist Action, and there are several others who do work for the mayor or organisations with which he is associated. In 2007 they includedthen : Simon Fletcher, the mayor’s chief of staff; John Ross, then Greater, then director of economics and business for the Greater London Authority (GLA); Redmond O’Neill, then GLA director of public affairs and transport (he subsequently died); Mark Watts, GLA climate change advisor; and Jude Woodward, senior policy advisor.

Others have included Atma Singh, the former advisor on Muslim issues and Professor Alan Freeman, who became prominent in the Unison branch at City Hall, and also runs the Venezuelan Information Centre – a propaganda organisation of which Ken Livingstone is president. The concentration of power by Socialist Action is the more astonishing when according to Ken Livingstone, it has probably had no more than 120 members in the last decade.[2]

On the face of it, Livingstone appears to have drawn much of his political talent from a comparatively small political gene pool. Livingstone’s close association with Socialist Action is an integral part or his story. Under his patronage, the group has become probably the most successful and influential revolutionary Marxist organization in Britain. Socialist Action has long been Livingstone’s guiding light, his foot soldiers, his mentors, and his political family.

It is clear that from 1985, Socialist Action set out to make itself indispensable to Ken Livingstone and to seek control, or ‘hegemony’ over the forces and groups making up the Labour Left. It has proved phenomenally successful. Socialist Action has made remarkable attempts to cover its tracks and even disappear altogether as an organisation, as part of the deep entryist policy adopted in the mid 1980s to protect members from any potential Militant-style purge. In part it has derived its power over the years from its secrecy and its deniability.

As far back as 1983, the group resolved to disappear from public consciousness, or as one internal document put it at the time, to bring about ‘the dissolution of the public lace’.[3] Leading members of Socialist Action are unquestionably talented and highly able but they blundered in thinking they could make their organisation invisible because they have left a paper trail a mile wide. …..

John Ross was at the forefront of the internal struggle to ditch the industrial strategy and get all IMG members to join the Labour Party en masse and then seek to control the Left bloc within it. Supporting Ross was another key figure in Livingstone’s political career, Redmond O’Neill. At the December 1982 conference, Ross carried the day and over the next few months IMG members joined the Labour Party. A minority who disagreed with the policy of ‘deep eritryism’ split away and formed its own party, the International Group which became a political irrelevance.

Despite becoming Labour members, the Ross majority still remained organised as a separate political organization. They decided to rebrand themselves as the Socialist League, and to establish a newspaper called Socialist Action. Like Militant, the group became known by the name of their paper rather than as the Socialist League. ‘The.next steps towards a revolutionary party comprise a fight for a class struggle within the Bennite current,’ said one discussion paper at the time. ‘For this a new newspaper is necessary – one that is seen as the voice of revolutionary socialists within the Labour Party and which can thereby give political expressions to the mass struggles of workers and youth who in the next period will seek overall political answers within the Labour Party. ‘…

Socialist Action will fight for leadership within the Bennite Current.’[12]

The Socialist League/Socialist Action met for the first time as a central committee at the Intensive English School in Star Street near Marble Arch for the start of a two-day conference on Saturday, 22 January 1983. The official launch of Socialist Action took place the following morning[13] and it first appeared on 16 March. The group’s old paper, Socialist Challenge, ceased to exist.[14] The group’s overall revolutionary objective did not change, only the strategy to bring it about, as an internal document in January 1983 made clear: ‘…

Socialist Action believes that it will be impossible to make the transition to socialism without incurring the armed resistance of the ruling class and thereby the necessity for violent self-defence by the working class.’[15] From the outset, Ken Livingstone was clearly an important force within the ‘Bennite current’ for Socialist Action. John Ross and comrades identified two Bennite wings: the Labour Co-ordinating Committee, a left-wing coalition within the Labour Party comprising Chartists from Briefing, and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, CLPD. Socialist Action identified the second wing ‘crystallising around forces such as the Campaign Group of MPs, Livingstone, the left of Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (LCND)… and the constituency left…’[16] Its slogans were now: ‘Deeper into the Labour Party!’, ‘Deeper into the trade unions!’, ‘For a new newspaper!’,[17] ‘Defend socialist policies!’, ‘Stop the witch-hunt!’, ‘Remove the right-wing Labour leaders!’[18]

In September 1983, Socialist Action took the decision to disappear from public view. This meant closing down the Other Bookshop and taking extreme security measures to guarantee invisibility and deniability. Two months after the decision, Socialist Action’s leadership drew up a document entitled The dissolution of the public face’. It said: ‘This is a historical fact – namely that the public face dissolved itself. This requires no public announcement but all bodies of the [Trotskyist] world movement must be informed and act accordingly.’[23] Some members disagreed with the decision; one wrote: ‘The September meeting took a momentous decision. It voted 23 for and one against to formally dissolve our public organisation. The decision was taken on the basis of a false prognosis: that following the Labour Party conference there will be an immediate witch-hunt of our supporters within the mass organisation.’[24]

Although the purge stopped at Militant, no one at Socialist Action was taking any chances. The paranoia was evident in a Socialist Action document marked ‘top secret’, and called ‘Practical implementation of the new security measures in the centre’.[25] The note warned that Socialist Action had to be on its guard against any unexpected visits from the media, and that ‘any undesirable material should be kept out of sight’. In addition the print shop must be just a print shop and the bookshop just a bookshop,’ it added. There had to be checks on anyone entering both buildings. ‘This is important,’ continued the note cryptically, ‘because these areas have outside visitors, although some the most sensitive visitors at present (i.e. GLC) come UPSTAIRS frequently.’[26] (← p. 261)

One big problem was the post office box number used Socialist Action, it was the same box number as for the bookshop, the newspaper and its youth wing, later called Youth Action: P.O. Box 50, London N1 2XP. ‘We cannot continue with sending everything out with the same box number,’ according to the security document. ‘Moreover, the box number is in the name of an organization.’ Comrades were instructed to consider security even when writing memos and other documents: ‘It is possible to write them so they appear to those not in the know that they do not necessarily originate from an organization – i.e. writing in the third person, using more of a commentary style etc… If documents are written with security in mind, there should not be so many problems.’[27] It also meant being extra careful about what was thrown out: ‘We have a real problem in that we have no idea what happens our rubbish when it is taken away by the bin persons… ‘The only solution is to make the rubbish safe before it is takers a way which means we have to get a shredder.’ [28]

A new cleaning rota was instituted; leading figures, in Socialist Action, including John Ross and Redmond O’Neill, took it in turns to clean HQ. [29] Leading members now started using pseudonyms: Redmond O’Neill was ‘Lark’, Jude Woodward was ‘Lee’, while another member, Ann Kane, was ‘Swift’ [30] Alma Singh, who was ‘Chan’ says, ‘The reason was secrecy so as not to let people outside know who was doing what’ [31] After the closure of the bookshop, members met in rooms above pubs in the local Hackney/Islington area, namely, Cedar Room pub in Islington, the Cock Tavern in Mare Street, the Lucas Arms in Grays Inn Road and Tylor’s in Shacklewell Lane near the print shop. The witch-hunters did not come for Socialist Action, but secrecy and security became second nature to the group over the next quarter of a century.

During the mid to late 1980s, the group did successfully ingratiate itself with the Labour Left, For a fee, Socialist Action put its printing press at the disposal of many left-wing groups, including the CLPD and the Socialist Campaign Group for MPs. [32] At one stage, Socialist Action was losing an average of £762 a week and the press was vital for earning extra income. [33] It experienced money anxieties throughout the 1980s. …..

Trotskyist parties always inflate their membership numbers with their sense of self-importance but by the mid 1980s;.it is clear that about 500 people belonged to Socialist Action. This is made obvious in an internal document which stressed the importance of selling 4,000 copies of Socialist Action a week: ‘This means an average of eight per comrade.’[34]

Later, Socialist Action members would be encouraged lo give 10 per cent of their pay to the party.’ [35] Its members acquired a reputation for being intelligent, hard-working and even subservient to powerful left-wing figures, which meant they were often despised by other voices on the far left. Gerry Healy’s News Line was one: ‘This is how they [Socialist Action] see themselves: the chosen few, the brains trust, the-intellectual elite, the bright people with all the smart answers who are just waiting for the poor old working class to catch up. [36]

Certainly, Socialist Action considered Ken Livingstone to |be influential and clearly took time to cultivate him. In a rather convoluted reference to Livingstone’s importance, one paper from John Ross showed that ‘an intelligent reformism of the Livingstone type can incorporate elements of support for the oppressed. Socialist Action of course welcomes such support. But it does not represent intelligent reformism as the answer to Kinnock.’ [37] Livingstone remembers being paid a visit by John Ross shortly after his falling out with the Chartists and the others on the far left over rate capping. ‘He was the first in to say this was a temporary setback,’ remembers Livingstone. Ross grew in importance, particularly after Livingstone became an MP. He had always felt vulnerable dealing with balance sheets, finance and economics,’[38] as Reg Race had observed at the GLC.[39] With a first class economics degree from Oxford, Ross proved to be a valuable teacher for Livingstone, who says; ‘When I became an MP I employed John Ross to teach me economies, basically to be my economics advisor, and he’d turn up three times a week and we’d go through what was happening in the British economy and the world economy. He’d explain the theories behind it. This went on for two years.

And after about 18 months to two years we were asked to do a debate at a fringe meeting about the way forward and we went through it and I knew I was on top of the brief.’ [40] By 1985, according to Atma Singh, a former long-term member of Socialist Action, Livingstone was possibly the most important figure on the Left; the group considered both Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn to be spent forces. ‘They supported Ken Livingstone to make him as powerful as possible,’ says Singh. ‘Socialist Action understood that what they were after was some political power. If they couldn’t see a way of getting political power, they just wanted to be the most powerful; the term they used was [to achieve] “hegemony over the Left”. So they wanted to be the main group to dictate what was going on in the Left.’ [41]

Socialist Action became increasingly powerful on the left of the Labour Party. Members of the group were elected to important positions in key left-wing bodies and campaigns, including CLPD, Labour CND and various student bodies, including its own, Youth Action. Socialist Action stood for many of the same issues as Livingstone: equality regardless of race, gender and class, troops out of Ireland; unilateral disarmament. It was for the miners and the Greenham Common Women, Fidel Castro and so on, and against Kinnock and his witch-hunt and pretty well everything else for which be stood.

Atma Singh says that Socialist Action was ‘instrumental’ in getting Livingstone elected on to the NEC in 1987 and 1988. [42] ….. Wadsworth claims that Ken Livingstone and Socialist Action now colluded to get rid of him because he would not do what they wanted, ‘Socialist Action thought they could impose decisions on me including how we focused on the Stephen Lawrence campaign,’ says Wadsworth. ‘When I refused to go along with that they said, OK we’re going to get rid of you.’

Through late 1993 and early 1994, the ARA deteriorated rapidly. A former Socialist Action member of the ARA insists Wadsworth’s strategy was wrong, both in terms of the Lawrence campaign and towards the BNP by-election victory in the East End: “The correct response was to have a demo in the East End and Marc didn’t want to do that so he was increasingly separating himself out from the most important issues that were going on in racism in order to pursue his own things.’ [58] On 17 March 1994, Livingstone chaired a meeting of the ARA executive. [59] During the four-hour ‘rowdy meeting’ in a House of Commons office, Wadsworth threw a punch at Livingstone. He says: ‘It was at one of these crazy meetings where he was making these rulings and telling me to shut up that I launched at him. I didn’t actually hit him. I hit his hand. I was going to hit him. This had gone on for months and he treated me like a boy sitting next to him.’ [60]

At another meeting, on 30 March 1994, Livingstone and the Socialist Action contingent failed by only one vote to persuade the executive to dismiss Wadsworth on grounds of professional misconduct. [61] The infighting continued for another six months as Livingstone and Socialist Action attempted to wrest control from Wadsworth.

On 23 September 1994, the Anti-Racist Alliance issued the foil towing statement: ‘Ken Livingstone, supported by a faction called Socialist Action and a handful of unprincipled and unrepresentative members of the executive committee, has been waging relentless campaign to sack the national secretary. This behaviour is undemocratic and has led to unnecessary divisions in the ARA which the chair has made even worse by his repealed attacks on national office staff.’ [62] (← p. 268) ‘When they come for you they are incessant and they are like pit bulls,’ Wadsworth says of Socialist Action. ‘It’s just incessant obsessive politicking.’ On 30 September 1994, Livingstone went to the High Court to determine voting rights for the delegates to the ARA’s forthcoming annual meeting and an out-of-court settlement was reached. At the meeting on 15 October 1994, both Livingstone and Wadsworth stepped down; Wadsworth gave way to Kumar Murshid, a future Livingstone mayoral advisor on race but not a member of Socialist Action. Murshid walked away from the job after turning up at the ARA offices to find that Wadsworth had changed the locks. ARA co

llapsed rapidly after unions including the Transport and General Workers Union withdrew support. By February 1995, the National Assembly Against Racism, or NAAR, had been established largely by Socialist Action members, namely Redmond O’Neill, Jude Woodward and Anne Kane. [63]

Former member Atma Singh says that Socialist Action was so used to splits and sectarianism that ‘breaking one organisation and creating a new one is nothing dramatic for them’. [

64] Lee Jasper, who became Livingstone’s senior mayoral policy advisor on equalities, was its first secretary. He had also been one of the few non-Socialist Action opponents of Wadsworth on the ARA. In 2007, the NAAR was one of Britain’s biggest anti-racism groups with several subsidiary organisations, all supported strongly by then-Mayor Livingstone. Members of Socialist Action would continue to work closely with Livingstone throughout the 1990s. But they would come into their own when Livingstone became the first directly-elected mayor of London.

From Martin Bright’s review of Hosken’s book:

When I was first approached about the project I still believed Livingstone was an essentially benign figure. Like many on the left, I had been shocked when he extended the hand of friendship to the radical Egyptian scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an ideologue of the extreme religious right. But I assumed this could be explained by a combination of the Mayor’s ignorance of the politics of the Muslim world and a characteristic desire to shock conventional opinion.

In fact, it was a self-defeating act of political grandstanding that fatally undermined his claims to be a progressive politician. Pictures of the Mayor standing next to a man who has supported female circumcision, the execution of homosexuals and the killing of innocent civilians by suicide bombers will haunt him forever.

The more work I did on the Mayor’s office and its only incumbent, the more I realised there were serious problems with the way the institution was being run. Many of these lay with the institution of Mayor itself, which was designed to be run as a personal fiefdom. But there was more to it than that: Livingstone’s personal style and his tendency to surround himself with cronies from the revolutionary left on six-figure salaries meant that, in many ways, he was the very worst person to leave with such untrammelled power.

Livingstone once told me at a lunch for the City business leaders he has learned to love that he surrounded himself with people he could trust with his life and that Gordon Brown should do the same.

This is an understandable strategy for a politician with as many enemies as Livingstone. But, as Hosken explains in scrupulous detail, many of these people emerged from one tiny Trotskyite splinter group, Socialist Action. The leader of this group, John Ross, was the Mayor’s chief adviser on economics who prepared himself for helping run London by working in Moscow for most of the 1990s. He returned in 2000 to join up with his deputy, Redmond O’Neill, who had been running the faction in his absence. O’Neill now advises the Mayor on transport and Islamic issues. Each is paid more than £100,000 a year. Other SA advisers included Livingstone’s de facto deputy in City Hall, Simon Fletcher, and his race adviser, Atma Singh, who was purged after he objected to the cabal’s dalliances with radical Islam.

As Hosken explains, Singh has since revealed that this deranged group was still planning a ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’ for London when Livingstone first came to power in 2000. They believed they could set up a city state, independent from the rest of the country.

Today, Ken Livingstone’s campaign to be elected Mayor of London for 2012 is led by Simon Fletcher. He remains surrounded by Socialist Action adherents and fellow travellers. He still wants to make London into an independent city state controlled directly by himself:

In extraordinary comments, he told the Standard he will use “amazing charm and subtlety” to get New York-style independence for the capital. Mr Livingstone, 66, added: “I would actually declare independence and run the whole city. They can’t even run hospitals in London. Everything government does in London it gets wrong. If you look at the city of New York, the mayor runs the benefits system, some of the prisons even, and the healthcare and schools. “I’ve watched all my life, irrespective of which government… ministers trying to run hospitals from Whitehall. It’s just too big, too complicated. I’m in favour of devolving everything — not just in London. I think you should have strong regions as well.” The former Mayor added: “I would always say, to this government and also the next Labour government of Ed Miliband, devolve more down. I’d like to take over our NHS immediately. I would like to take over a major house-building programme, I’d like to run the benefits system.”

Mayor Johnson said, according to The Guardian:

“London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance. It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses.”

Mayoral hopeful – and a former London Mayor – Ken Livingstone however remarked:

“London is going backwards under a Tory leadership that should have made these advertisements impossible.

Now this is a bizarre statement, since the adverts were in fact “made impossible” – by Boris Johnson. But it is even more bizarre given that, when Ken Livingstone was Mayor, a company – Sandals Resorts – which had an explicitly ”no gays” policy didn’t have any trouble advertising through TfL and it was only three years into Livingstone’s mayorship that gay activists persuaded him to ban them, principally after a vociferous campaign by gay London newspaper, PinkPaper.

So, in contrast to Johnson, Livingstone actually let through homophobic adverts and a community campaign was needed to get him to act.

For gay Londoners, the TfL advert controversies did not stop there.

In 2007 – during Livingstone’s final term – the Tube banned an advert for Gay Times which showed two men (not naked men, I should point out) touching. While a little racy, it was no different from the covers of other lifestyle magazines and adverts featuring heterosexual couples, which had no trouble finding adspace. Nevertheless, Gay Times were asked to furnish a more ’sedate’ version for use on the Underground.

No one blamed Ken Livingstone or suggested he should have made either of these incidents “impossible”. Which is a pity in retrospect, since he seems to imply now that it actually is within The Mayor’s powers to stop these things even coming forward, let alone actually happening.

But perhaps the biggest advert for homophobes of all was one produced and paid for by Ken Livingstone himself.

I am of course talking about the fat and glossy “dodgy dossier” Livingstone produced to defend Yusuf al Qaradawi, an ultra homophobe who says on his website:

“Muslim jurists hold different opinions concerning the punishment for this abominable practice. Should it be the same as the punishment for fornication, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death? … While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.”

Livingstone, naturally, claims that this website, of which Dr Qaradawi is the “chief scholar”, was actually hacked by Jews – perhaps a Chaim Bondstein, double-oy-seven. This, despite the fact that the identical text appears in Dr Qaradwi’s book.

But all things considered, while the dossier defended homophobes and smeared gay campaigners, the greatest advert for homophobic intolerance ever produced in London to go anywhere near City Hall actually came from Livingstone’s City Hall: the photo of him embracing Qaradawi.

It is not hard to see a direct trajectoral link between that moment and the appearance of “gay free zone” stickers appearing in Tower Hamlets last year not coincidentally after Livingstone’s politicking in the area, followed swiftly by the intervention of his allies like Bob Pitt and Denis Fernando frustrating and blocking any display of outrage by the local gay community.

UPDATE:

Good grief! The Guardian – the broadsheet most vocally championing Ken Livingstone – has resorted to blaming the victim. In an editorial by Deputy Comment Editor, David Shariatmadari, the point is made that if gay charity Stonewall hadn’t produced adverts saying “Some people are gay, get over it”, these new anti gay adverts wouldn’t have been produced.

This is crazy and cruel. There isn’t an advert under the sun, by anyone or for anything, which can’t be spoofed or parodied, or turned on its head. So, when Shariatmadari says…

The gay rights charity’s provocative sloganeering may have ended up doing more harm than good

… he is actually saying gay people have no right to advocate in the public domain. If the BNP had ’spoofed’ an anti-racist poster, would he have said black people brought it on themselves?

Is this not really taking the biscuit for a supposedly progressive left-wing newspaper? No, not really: it’s what genuine liberals have come to expect from the self-proclaimed “progressive left” and their chosen candidates for political office.

Has the well respected  philosophyfootball.com become the clothing arm of  Respect?

Take look at http://www.philosophyfootball.com/view_item.php?pid=784

“29.03.2012 was a sensational moment in British political history. George Galloway has dubbed his victory in Bradford West the Bradford Spring. There’s never been anything quite like it, a party from the Left, outside the Westminster mainstream, turning a safe Labour Seat into a 10,000 majority against war and cuts, for a progressive alternative. Wear ‘Bradford Spring’ on your chest wherever you are and share in the joy of, for once, the neo-liberal consensus being shattered.

AND even better, for every shirt sold we will give one FREE to the army of young helpers, many unemployed, who helped secure the success in Bradford West. A small help toward ensuring the ‘Bradford Spring’ becomes a change for all seasons”

Note the second para “AND even better, for every shirt sold we will give one FREE to the army of young helpers, many unemployed, who helped secure the success in Bradford West” . Those with a legal mind will  wonder whether Gorgeous George will need to  record the income ( £12.99 per shirt  ) in his election expenses?

Older HP  readers, may recall that  Mark Perryman , who set up  Philosophy  Football used to be involved in Marxism Today during its Euro Comm phase. What a difference 25 years can make.  Mark if you are reading this – are you in it for the money or  the politics ?

In retrospect Bradford West was a disaster waiting to happen. Over the weekend left blogs have had a good thoughtful debate about lessons and future steps A key message has been that for Labour to learn for the future we must find out what went wrong . There appears to be recognition that a key part of this debate is best held after, and not before key local elections on 3rd May. However Next Generation Labour have have wasted no time in advising on the way forward -

Take a look below especially at paras 2 and 4 – note the language of ( incorrect ) certainty . If the this is a flavour of the debate to we can look forward to apres 3rd May then heaven help us

For anyone trying to gather why George Galloway won the Bradford West by-election so convincingly, they need to look no further than much of the Labour reaction. For a worryingly high section of the party, including some who would consider themselves on the left, there was an attitude of either blaming voters for daring to look elsewhere or Galloway for standing and acting as some kind Pied Piper figure, leading the poor simpletons of Bradford West astray. If the party is to make progress, it can take the following from the result:

1. Don’t take support for granted. The Bradford West result must be melted down, made into a nail and hammered into the coffin of triangulation. Working class communities need a reason to come out and vote Labour – the alternative is our core vote sitting on their hands and letting the Tories sneak in (alas, if Labour repeats the mistakes of Bradford West in other seats come the next election, they are highly likely to shift right). As Diane Abbott acknowledged, Galloway understood the importance of taking his campaign to the community, and was rewarded handsomely.
2. We have to realise that the wars still matter- and join the movement against more. The lack of importance some in the party place on the neo-con foreign policy agenda of the last decade is quite astonishing. ‘Iraq was ten years ago, and we won the seat in 2005, so clearly Iraq was irrelevant’ snapped the denial brigade. As well as the fact that, yes, even after 10 years, the butchering of a country does linger in the memory of quite a lot of people, the idea that the continuing presence of British troops in Afghanistan affects perceptions of the party seems alien to far too many. With this in mind, the importance of taking an active stance against aggression towards Iran (and indeed Syria, or any other country) cannot be overstated. Support for the disastrous NATO war on Libya doesn’t bear well, but apologising for Iraq and calling for an end to settlements in Palestine is a start on the long road towards creating a party of peace.
3. Mobilised youth are a polical force to be reckoned with. Key to Galloway’s success were the high level of young people who had been through the experiences of the anti-war and austerity movements. Students hitting the streets in winter 2010 were the first to turn the tide on the coalition, and creating a presence amongst these young people is vital. In order to do this we will need give them something to come out for – Ken Livingstone’s pledge to reinstate EMA for FE students in London is an excellent start, but this needs to be used as a prototype for national policies. Over half of young black men in Britain are currently unemployed. We should be shouting that from the rooftops. And yes – we need to talk about free education again.
4. Labour has to examine its relationships with Muslim communities. One of the more unpleasant responses to Galloway’s victory has been the suggestion that ‘the Muslim vote’ is somehow tainted and invalid. As well as wars waged on Muslim countries abroad, all too often Labour politicians have seen scapegoating Muslims as fair game- Liam Byrne’s vile campaign in Birmingham comes to mind particularly. This has extended to how people within the party are treated – see the expulsion of Lutfur Rahman, Gilligan smears being used against Ken Livingstone etc. However, MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn have managed to develop strong links with local Muslim groups by speaking out against Islamophobia and the war-mongering of the coalition and the Labour leadership before them. These are the kinds of alliances that must be built.
5. Austerity needs a fighting response – and a radical alternative. In a week with clear national anger at a ConDem budget so blatantly by and for the rich, Labour has gained its greatest momentum by coming out against it – Ed Miliband’s interrogation of the frontbench was been perhaps his most impressive PMQs performance so far. However, Labour needs to extend its opposition to the budget to the wider austerity agenda. Galloway’s election literature calling for the abolition of tuition fees and a strong anti-cuts message resonates with those being hit by the cuts far more than ‘too far, too fast’. The argument for a different direction of political travel can be won- but we need to make it first.

The key factor with all of these is that the people of Bradford West trusted Galloway to fight their corner over Labour. What the party has to do if it is to stop Britain going through an irreversible destruction of its greatest achievements is to take the fight to the coalition. If it starts to do this, then maybe we can start to talk about being the party of working people once again.

The following have signed the launch statement for Next Generation Labour.

Arthur Baker, Axel Landin, Ben Folley, Ben Furber, Ben Soffa, Caroline Alabi, Cat Smith, Heather Elliot and Lucille Harvey

Are they all in agreement with this approach ?

Update: Dhaibhidh C Mhac Dhuihdhlheigh of the Leninist Vanguard (Drumnadrochit Chapter) adds:

Brother George is the new Keir Hardie!

In particular he is talking about the online campaign group 38 Degrees, which organised the Save our Forest campaign and more recently a campaign to defend the NHS. 

He doesn’t mention how the Labour Party is arguably ahead of the Conservatives in this regard, or how much better blogs on the left have got such as Labour List and Liberal Conspiracy, or how organisations such as Occupy LSX have also pushed left of centre online activism forward (even if they did linger too long outside St Paul’s).

His solution to counter the strength of the left digitally is to launch a right of centre equivalent to 38 Degrees. It is called Right-Angle, naturally, which he describes as a “campaigning force that counters the efforts of 38 degrees, and speaks up for the silent majority in our country”.

Its first campaign is on ‘lower taxes for lower earners’ an effort he says to “reclaim this policy from the Liberals” aka the coalition partners.

It will be interesting to see how it develops and how the two organisations compare. He has a relatively bi-partisan attitude to 38 degrees and says he doesn’t see it as an irritant and neither does he “dismiss it because it is run by Labour activists” although he does say it “hectors” MPs who don’t support it.

“For the past few years now, we on the right have been busy congratulating ourselves on the success of our presence on the Internet.  In some ways it is understandable.  Right of centre websites like ConservativeHome, Guido, John Redwood’s blog and much more besides have created a forum for Tory activists, undermined the left and provided intellectual ballast. But, whilst we have been slapping ourselves on the back, in some ways, the left have leapfrogged over us.  Instead of Web 2.0, they have gone straight to 4.0, creating interactive campaigning websites, American-style, that have changed the nature of how pressure groups operate…

“We will also campaign on quality rather than quantity, so as not to create an almost ‘spam’ type email service which 38 degrees is in danger of becoming. Our intention is to not only to create a vast new emailing community of the centre right – but to spread our influence through Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus et al.  At present Right-Angle is beta-plus, and we would welcome your thoughts and recommendations.  Above all, please sign-up at www.right-angle.org.

“We can’t allow left-wing internet campaigning to dominate the web. Everything is moving towards online content. Smartphones are becoming mass phones (and affordable), and tablets are replacing computers. Even the book is being replaced by the Kindle. We are rapidly moving to the stage when future political battles will be won or lost on the Internet.  Right Angle is a small step to regain some of that space,” Halfon writes on Conservative Home.

I’m not saying that there’s no torture in Libya. I think that no regime in certain conditions could do without torture. It is a question of who is torturing whom.

I’d love to torture certain people. You can condemn me! If I had the power, I could torture Tony Blair. And I could torture George W Bush, etc.. I will not have any worry after torturing them. I’d go for a hearty meal and have a good night’s sleep without anything on my conscience, to come back the following day, and repeat the experience.

Don’t express moral outrage. We live in a class divided society. We will only start being human beings when we get rid of imperialism. Until that time, to get rid of all kinds of punishment is nonsensical. I am in favour of defending the oppressed people, the working class people against torture. I’m not in favour of the rights of the exploiters and their agents – simple as that.

By and large, what Gaddafi’s regime was doing was OK as far as I’m concerned.

Nice man.