Labour’s right wing are determined to oust the left, including left MPs, from the Labour Party. Party rules and natural justice mean nothing to those who run the Party today, but in presenting them with yet another pretext to attack the left, Diane Abbott may have scored a spectacular own goal.
Unfortunately, the letter that she sent to the Observer last Sunday, delivered an early birthday present to Starmer and provided just the excuse he needed. We can only imagine his glee. Ever since confirming that Jeremy Corbyn would not be allowed to stand again for Labour in Islington North, Starmer has been looking for any excuse to pick off other left MPs. It is now possible, whatever apologies Abbott make – and she has apologised for her letter – that she, too, will be suspended long enough to debar her as a Labour candidate in the next election. She could even be expelled.
We might understand what Diane Abbott was trying to say. She wanted to highlight the position faced by Black and Asian workers in Britain today. Official unemployment figures for 2022 show that while the overall average figure was 3.8%, it was much worse for Black and Asian communities. The average for white workers was 3.1%, but for other groups well over twice this: for example, for Pakistani workers it was 8.7%, Afro-Caribbean 8.5%, Chinese 7.8%, and Bangladeshi 7.3%. This situation is far worse among youth.
The squeeze on living standards has also disproportionately affected Black households more than white households. According to the Runnymede Trust, 46% of ethnic minority children are living in poverty. “For every £1 of White British wealth”, they report, “Indian households have 90-95p, Pakistani households 50p, Black Caribbean 20p, and Black African and Bangladeshi households have 10p”.
Eighteen times more likely to be stopped by police.
In addition to being at the bottom of the pile economically, Black and Asian workers, particularly youth, feel the daily threat of harassment and violence, including from those who claim to ‘protect’ them, the police. Black people are eighteen times more likely to be stopped and searched under Section 60 than their white counterparts and are more likely to be handcuffed or tasered.
Racism for Black and Asian workers and youth is therefore not a ‘theoretical’ issue, but a practical everyday issue that impacts on their right to walk around the streets minding their own business. Parents of Black youth should not worry about where their sons are going at night, for fear of being stopped by the police, or worse.
All of these sort of arguments and information need to be put forward by the representatives of the labour movement. But why could Diane Abbott not have done this without a crass lecture about the definitions of certain words and garbled historical comparisons? She only succeeded in appearing to minimise the Holocaust against Jewish people and almost dismiss the oppression of other ethnic or national groups like Travellers, Roma or Irish in the UK. Introducing prejudice against red-haired people was absurd, alongside these historic crimes.
The rightward march of the Labour leadership
We should have a unified left in the Labour Party, opposing the rightward march of the leadership and its growing anti-democratic practices. Instead, we have divisions on the left, with furious arguments raging on social media over the various definitions of “racism” and “prejudice”.
We should be clear on an issue: at different times, places and historical contexts, different ethnic, religious and cultural groups have suffered appalling oppression, including mass murder and near extermination. What we cannot allow is a debate about whether or not one monstrous crime was ‘worse’ than another.
The oppression of black people through chattel slavery and the Atlantic slave trade is a stain on humanity. The racist ideology which developed to justify it, is rooted in the economic development of early capitalism and it has political, social and even psychological consequences to the present day. It is not possible to overstate the impact of systematic, state racism against black people today in all walks of life.
In modern times there is no parallel to the attempt made by the Nazis to wipe out the entire Jewish people, and on an ‘industrial’ scale, systematically organised and put into effect. There can be no minimisation or trivialisation of that crime. But do we ‘compare’ these two historic crimes or tease them apart by semantic arguments over definitions? We do not.
Many Labour Party members have a natural and instinctive support for Diane Abbot, the first ever black woman MP, against attacks from the Tories, the media, and the Labour Right. She has been a prominent anti-racist voice throughout her whole period in Parliament and has been targeted for it in the most appalling way by social media trolls. She got little real support from the media or her right-wing ‘colleagues’ in Parliament for this tidal wave of vilification.
More online abuse than any other MP in Westminster
Not only has she been singled out for the vilest racist and misogynistic attacks – much more than any other MP – but the Forde Report, and the Al Jazeera documentary, The Labour Files, showed the personal abuse against her even from senior Labour Party staff. It left many Party members shocked and outraged.
Labour members and supporters know full well that the present Labour Party under the Starmer regime uses disciplinary procedures for nakedly factional purposes. Any suggestion that Abbott’s suspension and the subsequent investigation will be handled ‘fairly’ by such full-time officials will be laughed to scorn by members who have seen repeated abuses of process and flagrant disregard of rules.
The idea that the Labour leadership has ‘zero tolerance’ for racism is nonsense and they have been widely accused of demonstrating a ‘hierarchy of racism’ – where antisemitism is exaggerated and weaponised, while other forms of racism, and other bigoted opinions, are ignored or even tolerated. We know exactly how the right wing operates and that is all the more reason why we should not give them a stick with which to beat the left.
It is therefore with some sadness, and a sense of frustration, that Left Horizons feels obliged to comment on this matter. The political opinions Diane Abbott expressed in her Observer letter were indefensible and sending them to a newspaper which is the virtual house-journal of the Labour right is inexcusable.
It is understandable that those on the Labour left feel a sense of dismay at yet another attack from the right-wing backed, of course, by the Tory media. Diane Abbott’s letter was damaging, not only to herself, but to the left as a whole. Having said that, we do not support her suspension, particularly after her apology, and we oppose attempts by the right wing to bar her from standing in the next general election. That is a decision for Labour members in her CLP.
