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