Open Letter to John Alcock, Leader of Brighton & Hove Labour Group – The Stench of Hypocrisy Over Labour Islamaphobia is Overpowering
Brighton’s ‘Left’ Labour Councillors Endorse the Purge of Socialists by accepting False Anti-Semitism Allegations against 3 former Councillors
In May 2019 Labour became the largest party on Brighton & Hove Council. It gained 20 seats to the Green’s 19 and ran the Council. The response of the right was to make false allegations of anti-Semitism resulting in the suspension of Kate Knight and Anne Pissaridou and an ‘investigation’ into Nicki Brennan.
Kate resigned from Labour and Nicki Brennan soon followed. Instead of defending their colleagues Council leader Nancy Platts and now Labour Group leader John Alcock chose to side with the right. This whole affair was orchestrated by Peter Kyle, MP for Hove, ex-leader Daniel Yates and Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel, a group whose co-chair Simon Cobbs has demonstrated with the EDL.
The result was that the Green Party became the largest group and took control of the Council. The allegations were part of the war against the left by Starmer, as detailed in Labour’s Leaked Report. The Forde Inquiry into that report has been put on ice after Starmer bought off those Labour officials who had spent their time undermining Corbyn.
The result, after the Green Party won a byelection is that the Greens now have 20 seats to Labour’s 17 (or 16 depending on the position of Anne Pissaridou).
None of the 3 councillors are anti-Semitic. Nicki was investigated for having participated in a picket of the Council in October 2018 when the Council decided to support the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism. Kate was suspended for saying that anti-Semitism had been weaponised against the left and Anne for sharing a post referring to the Rothschilds and saying that it was an ‘interesting article’.
The use of the IHRA to attack critics of Apartheid Israel and supporters of the Palestinians has even been condemned by the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern, in testimony to Congress. He stated that ‘The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech.’
Strangely enough Rachel Reeves tweet praising Nancy Astor, a notorious supporter of Hitler and the Nazis didn’t merit any disciplinary action by Starmer, who became angry when it was raised at Labour’s NEC
That is why a group of academics, supported by over hundreds of other, mainly Jewish academics, drew up the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism. Unlike the IHRA, the JDA is about anti-Semitism not a defence of Israel or Zionism.
Daniel Yates, right-wing former Labour and Council leader – a privatisation enthusiast who confines his anti-racism to ‘antisemitism’
Kate’s offence is denying that there ever was an anti-Semitism problem in the Labour Party, a point of view held by 70% of Labour members. They call it ‘denialism’. Free speech on the issue has been banned. Israeli ‘democracy’ has now been imported into the Labour Party. Racists like Daniel Yates and Peter Kyle, Hove’s MP, know very well that there is no substance to these allegations of anti-Semitism, hence they seek to ban any contrary narrative.
Unfortunately Anne decided to confess. She is reported as saying:
“I am deeply sorry for my actions and any distress I have caused to the Jewish community.
It is well known that many victims of false allegations decide to confess. False confessions are a subset of criminology. In 1989 the Central Park 5, who were Black, confessed to the rape and murder of a white jogger. Trump took out adverts in the New York Times calling for their execution. In 2014 they were awarded $41 million compensation. They were wholly innocent.
In the 1930s the victims of Stalin’s purges nearly all confessed, see the Innocence Project. You create a paradigm in which the existence of ‘anti-Semitism’ is accepted as the taken for granted norm and if you challenge it you are some kind of freak. Hence why Momentum and much of the left shies away from challenging Starmer.
However Anne should have saved her breath. Jews in Brighton and Hove were not concerned with her post. The only group that was concerned was Sussex Friends of Israel, (aka Sussex Jewish Representative Council). In December 2004 SFOI organised a meeting with an Israeli speaker, Mordechai Kedar, who advocates raping Palestinian women at times of war. That is who Yates, Kyle and Appich’s friends are.
Instead of Anne apologising to the Jewish ‘community’ SFOI should apologise to women in Sussex for hosting an advocate of rape.
Contrast that with Luke Akehurst, on Labour’s National Executive who works for We Believe in Israel. In 2018 Akehurst openly supported the Israeli army using snipers to kill unarmed protestors at the Gaza fence. Over 300 were killed, including 50 children. Has Akehurst been suspended or expelled? Of course not. Racism against Palestinians or Muslims in Labour is rewarded not punished.
Anti-Semitism is simple. The Oxford English dictionary defines it as ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ the JDA defines it as ‘discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews.
It should be obvious, even to the most cowardly Momentum supporter or Labour Councillor that opposition to Apartheid is not the same as anti-Semitism. Historically most Jews opposed Zionism as form of Jewish anti-Semitism (its belief that Jews are one nation/race whose ‘real home’ is in Israel not where they live.
I have therefore decided to write an Open Letter to John Alcock, the co-leader of the Labour Group with Carmen Appich. Carmen is an open Zionist/racist. Alcock, who was a supporter of Peoples Assembly, presumably still says he is a socialist
Tony Greenstein
Addendum
I find it difficult to understand the report that Anne Pissaridou is no longer a member of the Labour Group but still takes the Whip.
In over 40 years I have seen come and go many Brighton (& then Brighton & Hove) Labour Groups. The first leader is the now long forgotten Ian McGill, a fine speaker and a good socialist. I knew many councillors, many of whom I disagree with like Andy Durr but I can’t think of a Labour Group that is as weak and flaccid as this particular one.
It is no surprise that someone so patently weak and insubstantial as Nancy Platts became leader. Like Keir Starmer what she lacks in personality she makes up for in duplicity.
Quite why Anne Piassridiou hasn’t done what Nicki Brennan and Kate Knight have done and resign the whip and leave the Labour Party is a mystery. If Anne believes she is going to be reinstated and allowed to restand for Council then she is whistling in the wind.
Tony Greenstein
Open Letter to John Alcock
Dear John Alcock,
It is said that‘those whom the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad’. It is difficult to find any other explanation for the Labour Group’s political suicide. The decision to force two councillors to leave the Party and a third to inhabit the political equivalent of purgatory resulted in the Green Party becoming the largest group on Brighton and Hove Council and gaining office.
From 20 councillors in 2019 Labour went to 17 today (in reality 16). The allegations of anti-Semitism are so fraudulent that they make Philip Greene seem honest by comparison. Nicki Brennan’s ‘crime’ was holding a placard calling Israel an apartheid state on a lobby outside a Council meeting in October 2018.
If Brennan’s actions were anti-Semitic then so were those of B’Tselem, Israel’s human rights group and Human Rights Watch which this year described Israel as an Apartheid State. There is copious evidence for this.
For example Israel’s 90 strong Olympic team in Tokyo contained not a single Israeli-Palestinian despite them constituting 20% of Israel’s population. Why? Because Olympic standard sports facilities, like so much else, are not located where Arabs live in Israel.
Israel has vaccinated most of its Jewish population yet it refuses, contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention to vaccinate Palestinians living under occupation. In Jerusalem Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse Palestinians in East Jerusalem on the grounds that their homes were abandoned by Jews in the 1948 war. However homes in West Jerusalem that Palestinians abandoned cannot be reclaimed. That is what a ‘Jewish’ state means.
There is barely a dictatorship in the world that Israel doesn’t supply with arms or whose military Israel doesn’t train
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the leaders of the ANC have described Israeli Apartheid as worse than that in South Africa. Yet today in Labour Israel is seen as the equivalent of Reagan’s city on the hill and its opponents castigated as anti-Semites.
Jewish Voices for Labour has just issued a report showing that Jewish members of the party are being disproportionately singled out for disciplinary action. Whereas 0.29% of Labour members have faced accusations of anti-Semitism, the proportion of Jewish members subject to false accusations is 1.4% – 6 times higher. Even worse 6% of JVL members are being subjected to false accusations of anti-Semitism – 20 times the average rate.
What kind of campaign against anti-Semitism is it which singles out Jews? It should be obvious to even the most stupid Labour councillor that this is about Zionism and Israel not anti-Semitism. As JVL note:
It appears that as a population share, almost five times more Jewish than non-Jewish Labour members have faced complaints of antisemitism which have been investigated. We estimate that Jewish JVL members have been subject to actioned antisemitism complaints at a rate 20 times greater than non-Jewish Labour members;
In November Keir Starmer will be the guest of honour at the Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel Annual Dinner. Starmer previously described himself as a ‘Zionist’ i.e. a Racist Without Qualification. The same Starmer who pulled out of a Ramadan even after being told to by the Board of Deputies, because one of its organisers supported a Boycott of Israeli dates and CAGE, which defends prisoners.
Of course if you have to defend arresting Palestinian children as young as 12, blindfolding and beating them whilst denying them access to lawyers or their own parents, whilst Jewish children are afforded full legal protection, then it’s easier to cry ‘anti-Semitism’.
Kate Knight’s ‘offence’ was ‘denialism’, a Kafkaesque word that means denying that there is a problem of Labour anti-Semitism. It’s akin to being prosecuted and pleading innocent only to be told by the judge that this is proof of your guilt! It is the ‘justice’ practiced under Hitler and Stalin.
‘Denialism’ is what those who conducted the witch trials in 17th century Salem, New England practised. As Elizabeth Reis wrote:
“During examinations, accused women were damned if they did and damned if they did not. If they confessed to witchcraft charges, their admissions would prove the cases against them; if they denied the charges, their very intractability, construed as the refusal to admit to sin more generally, might mark them as sinners and hence allies of the devil.”
The only women who were hanged at Salem were those who denied their guilt. You and Cllr Nancy Platts, have learnt your trade well.
Platts, who formerly worked in Corbyn’s office, makes Judas seem like a model of probity and loyalty. A year ago she said that she was ‘deeply sorry to the Jewish community on behalf of the council’s Labour Group.’ What for? An innocuous Facebook post that Anne Pissaridou shared 5 years ago?
Former leader Daniel Yates, the man who helped implement TTIP as part of the government’s privatisation agenda in the NHS, went one further. He said that he was ‘ashamed of being a Labour city councillor’. Yates can rest assured that he’s not the only one who is ashamed of the fact that he is a Labour councillor!
Nancy Platts, former Labour leader who handed control of B&H Council to the Greens, makes political cowardice into an art form
But if you and Platts want to do some apologising, then I’m more than happy to help you. You could start by apologising to the Palestinians for having supported the Balfour Declaration in 1917, even before the Liberals and Tories under Lloyd George. The British Empire gave Palestine, which did not belong to them, to the Zionist Organisation to ethnically cleanse.
You could also apologise to Black people for Alan Johnson, Blair’s Home Secretary, having pioneered the use of the term ‘hostile environment’ when describing Labour’s immigration policy.
John Mann, the author of the fake antisemitism campaign brought out a pamphlet explaining how to deal with the anti-social problem of Gypsies
And you could also apologise for having supported the Immigration Act 2014 which led to the Windrush Scandal. Just 6 Labour MPs voted to oppose it. Strangely enough Tom Watson, John Mann, Louise Ellman and those behind Labour’s false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations abstained.
Another apology is due for Labour’s recent reinstatement of Trevor Phillips. Philips believes that Muslims are ‘a nation within a nation’ and that allowing a non-Muslim child to be adopted by Muslims is ‘akin to child abuse.’ Just imagine that Pissaridou or Knight had said this about Jews? The heavens would have fallen in yet neither you nor any Labour councillors, still less Kyle, have seen fit to comment.
Free Speech in the Labour Party has been abolished – all in the name of fighting ‘antisemitism’
As Rachel Shabi wrote in the Independent ‘The stench of Islamophobia in the Labour Party is getting stronger’. And the stench of hypocrisy from you and Platts is also becoming overpowering.
Despite his openly racist remark about Travellers Starmer and Evans have made no attempt to expel Luke Stanger – only ‘antisemitism’ merits expulsion
You could also apologise to Brighton’s Gypsies. 3 years ago Luke Stanger, a member of Hove Labour Party and friend of Kyle and Cllr. Henry, tweeted that Travellers ‘were a nasty blight on society.’ Stanger was suspended in 2019. He has also sexually harassed a number of women. Why hasn’t this racist reprobate been expelled?
Ann Mitchell, a member of Hove Labour Party Executive was expelled for tweeting that ‘privileging anti-Semitism above other forms of race hatred is nothing to be proud of’ and quoting Asa Winstanley’s ‘the Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis.’ There was nothing racist about what she said. She spoke about the Israel lobby, a veritable fact, yet she was a victim of the fake anti-Semitism campaign.
Why is it, when there are so many groups to whom Labour owes an apology that only one group, Jews, receive an apology? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jews are being used as a political football as part of an altogether different agenda, which is support for Israel and its role in British foreign policy in the Middle East. Jews are a prosperous section of the White community. They are not oppressed.
Jews are neither economically discriminated against nor the subject of state racism. Back in 1961 Geoffrey Alderman’s The Jewish Community in British Politics found that 40% of British Jews were to be found in social classes A&B compared to less than 20% nationally.
Tom Watson went out on a limb to defend racist Labour MP Phil Woolas
I am unaware of the name of the Jewish Geoffrey Alderman Stephen Lawrence. Nor am I aware of any Jews deported in the Windrush Scandal. Driving whilst Jewish is not an offence. Jews are not subject to stop and search or disproportionately imprisoned. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Labour’s concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ would disappear if Jews were Black and there were no ‘Jewish’ state in the Middle East.
Of course if Sussex Jewish Representative Council (Sussex Friends of Israel), the Board of Deputies are genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism they have a very simple remedy. The next time Israel attacks the Palestinians they can issue a joint statement condemning the attacks and informing people that British Jews condemn Israel’s actions. Furthermore that British Jews bear no responsibility for the actions of a ‘Jewish’ state. Until then they should put up or shut up.
Like many neo-Nazis Tommy Robinson is a strong supporter of Zionism he was given a hero’s welcome at this demonstration
What happened though is that as soon as the latest attacks on Gaza started the Board of Deputies rushed to support them and then organised a demonstration in support of Israel’s genocidal attack which killed 67 Palestinian children. It is little wonder that Tommy Robinson turned up to a hero’s welcome. The death of over 260 Palestinians must have seemed like Xmas come early.
Genuine Labour anti-Semitism has always been the property of the Labour Right. It was not the left wing which was responsible for thousands of Jews being sent to Auschwitz but Peter Mandelson’s grandfather Herbert Morrison. Morrison refused to admit all but a trickle of Jewish refugees from Nazi occupied Europe. [Excuses Excuses The Failure to Amend Britain’s Immigration Policy Lesley Clare Urbach].
Ramsay MacDonald wrote after a visit to Palestine in 1922 about
‘the rich plutocratic Jew, who is the true economic materialist. He is the person whose views upon life make one anti-Semitic. He has no country, no kindred… he is an exploiter of everything he can squeeze. He is behind every evil that Governments do… He detests Zionism because it revives the idealism of his race.’
And where was this published? In a pamphlet by Poalei Zion, (today’s JLM!) Far from opposing anti-Semitism, Zionism with its belief that Jews are not at home where they live, is its greatest supporter.
John Alcock, you are no more than the bag carrier for the Labour Right. You could at least have left the dirty work to your co-leader Carmen Appich, a racist Zionist. Appich’s only claim to fame is calling Kate Knight a ‘bitch’ when she assumed that she was muted on Zoom. Yet what was the reaction of Platts? She was said that ‘Cllr Appich apologised for the “horrible mistake” and has promised that it will not happen again.’
Well Anne Pissaridou has also apologised. Why the difference in treatment? Zionists like to extract their pound of flesh. In Israel over 300 families of Palestinians murdered by the army are unable to bury the bodies of their loved ones because Israel has stolen the bodies. The latest victim is an 11 year old boy gunned down this week. Zionists live up to the worst caricatures of the anti-Semites.
Brighton Momentum spent over 2 years gaining a majority on Labour’s Campaign Forum putting forward left candidates such as Amanda Evans, Nick Childs and John Alcock. Yet today it is impossible to differentiate between Momentum and the Right on the Council. They have merged into one. As Orwell wrote:
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
You are not the only left councillor to have made the journey to the right. It is a well travelled road. It is noticeable that all of the Momentum supported candidates – Amanda Evans, Nick Childs and others – have remained silent.
Tommy Robinson standing on an Israeli captured tank – what the Labour Right can’t answer is what it is about Israel that the far-Right so loves
But there are councilors who stayed true to their principles and remained true to their principles and socialistm. Francis Tonks, a former miner and mayor, who is now over 90 and Jack Hazelgrove, broke ranks with their colleagues over plans to transfer the council’s housing stock to an ALMO. In a ballot in February 2007 of Council tenants 77% rejected New Labour’s privatisation plans under Council leader Simon Burgess, today part of Lloyd Russell-Moyle’s team.
You have chosen to go along with these utterly fake allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ by the supporters of Israel, the world’s only Apartheid state. Both you and the Momentum supported councillors should hang your heads in shame. Assuming you understand the meaning of the word.
In solidarity
Tony Greenstein
