Full of Sound & Fury Signifying Nothing

No sooner had Lloyd-Russell Moyle MP Apologised for Supporting the Purge of Socialists from the Labour Party than he Recanted!

Lloyd Russell-Moyle’s bravado lasted til the first right-wing headline – this is the Socialist Campaign Group  

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I must confess to having a soft spot for my local Labour MP, Russell Lloyd-Moyle. Perhaps it’s a case of familiarity breeding contempt. Whenever Lloyd makes a radical gesture you can be sure that he will be rowing back as fast as his little legs can carry him. It’s a case of 1step forward and 3 steps back.

when I questioned Lloyd at a public meeting about his lack of support for Chris, he simply lied to me and said Corbyn had told Chris what he had to do.  This was  untrue

Being a generous soul I welcomed Lloyd’s statement at the Socialist Campaign Group rally last Tuesday condemning the purge of socialists and apologising to the thousands of anti-racists and socialists who have been hurt and devastated by false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ from the racists and reactionaries who are or were part of Labour’s toxic Governance and Legal Unit.

“I want to apologise from all of us but me in particular. Because if we have made you feel like you are alone, if we have not reached our arm around you enough in these tough times when you are being purged or set up with false allegations, I not only apologise, I will endeavour to do better because we have to support each other.

I must confess I did draw the line at Lloyd putting his arms around me! Perhaps it’s my religious upbringing, being the son of a rabbi, but I welcome the conversion of a sinner on the road to Damascus (yes I know it’s the wrong religion but it’s the principle I’m talking about!).  The picture of Lloyd being blinded by the light as he fumbles around, looking for people to put his arms around is a touching one.

The first person Lloyd might want to reach out to is Amanda Bishop. Amanda’s crime was to suggest a march on a synagogue to protest at their support for Israeli Apartheid. Now I’m not sure marching on synagogues is the best tactic but there is nothing anti-Semitic about it.  I can remember an old Jewish member of Brighton PSC making such a proposal regularly before others knocked it back. 

I picketed a Christian Church in Worthing whose members had been active in harassing women seeking an abortion at a clinic in Brighton. There was nothing anti-Christian about my actions or those of my fellow demonstrators. Yet what was Lloyd’s response to a woman who had lived in South Africa and been one of the few White opponents of Apartheid? Lloyd-Moyle tweeted:

“What she said was revolting and tonight, after I first read the comments today and reported them, she has been suspended. “This is anti-Semitism and not acceptable in our society and our party; no excuses.”

So an apology to Amanda by Lloyd would be especially welcome.

Lloyd’s email to Iain McNicol – naturally he had informed noone about it

Much the same happened to me. When I was suspended in March 2016 for ‘comments you are alleged to have made’  I put in a Subject Access Request and received back, among other documents, some emails from LRM. Although they were redacted it didn’t take long to work out that LRM was the rat who had written to McNicol urging my expulsion. The whole correspondence is here.

I wrote to LRM and on 23 August 2016 LRM offered me a ‘limited apology’ (although his spelling is appalling!) and admitted that he had not only informed on me but that ‘I wrote to the regional office on a number of occasions about differnt members.’ Before going on to say that

‘I hope that you can accept my limited apoligy for point 3 being poorly worded, and I hope that you will understand that whilst I don’t regard you as an anti-semite, I do believe that to style, tone and manor which you comment to be very unpleasant and to have no place in the Labour Party. ‘

If you can make your way through the appalling spelling and grammar, Lloyd concluded on a high moral tone:

Well we all try to be kind, even to our enemies.  And I have a few!  You will imagine my surprise when, a few weeks later I came across this act of ‘kindness’ on Facebook.

‘I am the [unelected] chair of his CLP and can tell you he is an abusive, unpleasant little man. I have told him that to his face. He alienates people who should be his natural supporters and whilst I’m not convinced he should be suspended for anti-Semitism he has gone…’

 I wrote back that ‘I have rarely come across such dishonesty and two facedness as that of yourself.  It really is staggering, even on the personal, let alone the political level.’  I also added for good measure that:

I know it is a small matter but it was a lie to say you had been unpleasant to my face. Quite the contrary. You are one of those people who are very pleasant and obsequious to someone’s face and then when their backs are turned you abuse them. You have all the social graces of an untrained pet.

I wrote a blog on what happened with the two-faced Moyle at the time. Nonetheless I turned up to campaign for Lloyd at the 2017 General Election campaign and no one was happier than me when he ousted the Tory incumbent Simon Kirkby. I even distributed leaflets for Lloyd in 2019 before being thrown off the campaign for sending him critical emails and being an expelled Labour Party member. Clearly he wasn’t putting his hands around me! See No one Better Represents the Opportunism and Lack of Principle of the Campaign Group of MPs than Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Having made his bold apology for all the injustices members have undergone, Lloyd then faced a backlash, led by the Spectator which quoted Lloyd as saying  ‘‘this has been a goddamn awful conference with a goddamn awful leadership’ before suggesting that Starmer ‘’is not a politician for the Labour party.‘

All of which is true but would RLM stand by his words? On the basis of his previous record the answer is clearly ‘no’. No sooner had the words of his speech rippled through the media than RLM was backpedalling.

In response to one particularly venomous Zionist Lloyd tweeted that

There are anti-semites that have rightly been expelled from party & for other reasons too (bullying behaviour or supporting other parties). But have been a number (which David Evans himself has apologise to) who have been threatened with expulsion or investigation for no reason.

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In fact there have been virtually no expulsions of anti-Semites. Almost all of those expelled and suspended have been critical of the apartheid State of Israel. And even those guilty of anti-Semitic phraseology, the reason for which is because Zionist groups like the Jewish Labour Movement and Board of Deputies claim to speak on behalf of all Jews whilst supporting Israeli war crimes. It’s little wonder that some people believe them. In other words a classic case of Zionism creating the very ‘anti-Semitism’ that it protests about.

Given that RLM refused even to sign a petition calling for the reinstatement of Jeremy Corbyn, because ‘he doesn’t feel this was a political decision in the first place‘ (what was it? a culinary decision?) you can be sure that RLM’s cowardice and self-interest will outweigh any political principles that are lurking.

No doubt at Labour Party Conference next year, LRM will make another fine speech attacking the leadership and their purge. Meanwhile he will do his best not to antagonise Starmer or the red Tories that now run Labour. After all, when all is said and done, Lloyd’s main concern is not to follow Jeremy Corbyn and have the whip withdrawn.

Tony Greenstein