The British Labour Party’s struggles to confront anti-Semitism within its ranks have been well-documented, but rarely have been they been this funny.
Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW), a campaign group set up to protest the expulsion of Labour Party members for alleged anti-Semitism, recently pruned some of its own ranks, expelling several members for their anti-Semitism. Now, those twice-expelled members will be holding a protest at the same location as LAW’s public meeting this Saturday.
Gerry Downing, the twice-expelled Labour Party member responsible for planning the protest (“Reject Bogus Left antiSemitism“), is trying to fight his way back into LAW. Downing was first suspended from Labor in March 2016 for tweeting a link to an article that purported to “address the Jewish Question,” and claimed the “Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie” had “played a vanguard role for the capitalist offensive against the workers.”
Following his expulsion from Labour, Downing helped set up LAW along with Jackie Walker, who was suspended from Labour for writing that Jews were primarily responsible for the British slave trade (Walker herself is Jewish).
However, Downing’s association with the group Socialist Fight led to his expulsion from LAW, who describe Socialist Fight’s positions as “a form of antisemitism.” In a motion passed at a recent meeting, LAW condemned Socialist Fight’s assertion that “Jewish campaigns in support of the Palestinians such as Jews Against Zionism, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods or Jewish Voice for Labour are racist because they operate on the basis of a supposedly ‘Jewish moral superiority.’”
Now, the splinter group and the splinter of the splinter group are set to square off at a London pub.
Jesse Bernstein is a former Intern at Tablet.
Jesse Bernstein is a former Intern at Tablet.
