Well no one can say it hasn’t been a good day for democracy.  The witch-hunting of socialists under the bogus pretext of anti-Semitism, i.e. opponents of the world’s only Apartheid state, Israel, is coming to an end in the Labour Party.

Christine Shawcroft is a good socialist and she has stuck up for her principles in the past, notably over her support for Lutfur Rahman, the Mayor of Tower Hamlets was was deposed, the victim of despicable racism from Sir Eric Pickles, the Tory Chair of Conservative Friends of Israel and the Labour Right.  He was also the victim of judicial racism in the form of Judge Richard Mawry.

Of course no-one objects to genuine racists, including anti-Semites, being expelled or disciplined where there is clear evidence unrelated to Israel.  I mean ‘old-fashioned’ anti-Semitism that means hatred or hostility to Jews as Jews.  Hostility to Zionism is not anti-Semitism, it is anti-racism.

If the anti-Semitism witch-hunt had been about racism then why, when Islamaphobia is 4 times worse than anti-Semitism have there been no prominent cases? 

Why when anti-Roma racism in Britain is 6.5 times as bad as anti-Semitism do we have nothing said about it?  We have Labour Councils still driving gypsies from pillar to post and evicting them and making them homseless yet nothing is said.  Why?  Because unlike anti-Semitism, anti-Roma racism doesn’t accord with the foreign policy objectives of the Labour Right.

The rightwing press and media went to town on today’s events. The absurd Tory blogger, Guido Fawkes headed his story Red Terror before going on to call me a ‘nutjob’ for calling for Black’s removal the night before.

The Independent, which has secured the services of a mole inside the Labour Against the Witchhunt Facebook page, eavesdropped on a conversation between Jackie Walker and myself.  I had called for the picket of the National Executive Committee next Tuesdayand  to have posters saying ‘Sack Black’.  Jackie, being of a somewhat more conservative political temperament than me, opposed this.  Our conversation was good natured but it was private to members of a closed Facebook page.  Nonetheless it was splashed over the Internet today, Twitter included.   Other media organisations to reprint the LAW Facebook post included the Huffington Post.

The Jewish Chronicle’s Political Director, Marcus Dysch, was particularly busy on Twitter.  Dysch whose trademark is to see how many mistakes he can get into one article seems obsessed with me at the moment. Dysch went apoplectic.  Apparently I am ‘calling the shots’ in the Labour Party at the moment.  In pursuit of his favourite hobby Dysch makes a few more mistakes including saying that my disciplinary hearing is next week.  Sorry Dysch but your informant has obviously not leaked the latest news to you.  No it isn’t!

Dysch had to be reassured by the paid perjurer and taxi fare dodger himself, the Jewish Labour Movement’s Chair Jeremy Newmark that the NCC hearings to try Jackie Walker and me will be unaffected by what has happened today.  Dysch, whose extreme stupidity is quite amazing, even for Jewish Chronicle journalists, suggests that I am ‘orchestrating oversight of the procedures.’  

Let’s break this down – Jon Lansman and others on Labour’s National Executive Committee decide to get rid of that old hatchet-woman Ann Black and put in as Chair of the Disputes Committee the much more sensible socialist Christine Shawcroft.  At the same time I call, in a closed Facebook page for the removal of Black.  This coincidence has now become, in the morbid mind of Dysch me orchestrating what happened. 

Sad to say, when Lansman decided that Ann Black had to go, he didn’t consult me! Of course that is both wrong and foolish and I have told him so to his face.  However I can live with this slight.  Dysch is an excellent example of how mediocre the Jewish Chronicle’s journalists have become when you think of people like Bernard Josephs , or T.R. Fyvel or Chaim Bermant.  If Dysch seriously thinks that my expression of an opinion had had a decisive effect on what happened he needs to see the men in white coats.

Of course what I was doing was expressing a widespread sentiment, not least in Brighton and Hove Labour Parties that Ann Black, being a vicious liar and witch hunter, who suspended a party for the crime of voting for the wrong people, had to go.  She was hostile to democracy and a relic of the Blair days.  It is a wonder how she ever managed to crawl onto the Left slate.

However the witch hunt has not gone away. Much as I hate to admit it, Jeremy Newmark is correct, at least so far.  The decisions of the Disputes Committee today have no effect on cases that have already gone to the Disputes Committee, of which there are a large number.  It is imperative that we now demand a freeze on all such cases until the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report on natural justice, due process and transparency are introduced.  The previous procedures of the Compliance Unit which has led to the presentation of the cases before it, coupled with the right-wing bias of the NCC, has led to injustice in scores of cases.

That is why we call on people to support Labour Against the Witchhunt’s picket of the National Executive Committee next Tuesday and above all Join Labour Against the Witchhunt.

Tony Greenstein