By John Pickard
Two Labour Parties in the north of England have reacted with fury at the full-page advert in the Guardian last week, signed by 67 Labour peers, and calling for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to stand down. The ad carried a Labour rose logo, giving the unmistakeable impression that it had some ‘official’ status. The following emergency resolution was passed at a meeting of Penrith and the Border CLP.
This Constituency Labour Party totally and wholly condemns and rejects the full page advert that was placed in the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, accusing the Labour Party and the leader of the Labour Party as being anti-Semitic.
The advert was placed by unelected members of the Labour Party who sit in the House of Lords and who owe their positions in the Lords to the Blair/Brown governments.
They are in the main supporters of an organisation called Progress, many of whom are also members. This organisation is primarily funded by business, some of those businesses involved in PFI. A system that was introduced by the Blairites, and which is destroying the National Health Service.
Within a month of Jeremy Corbyn’s first election win, Progress called a meeting in Carlisle and one the main speakers was Lord Roger Liddle, who also happens to be a Cumbria County Councillor member for Wigton, representing the Labour Party. The purpose of the meeting was to criticise and denigrate Corbyn, informing the assembled audience that he was a loser and would damage the Labour Party before he had been in position one month.
There was no mention of anti-Semitism was made between the first and the second election of Jeremy Corbyn, only after he won on the second occasion did the weaponised accusation raise its head.
The Labour Party is NOT institutionally anti-Semitic, despite accusations, lies and innuendo. These attacks are designed for one purpose only, to destabilise the Labour Party and cause it to lose general election, in the vain hope that these people who bring the accusations can finally get rid of Corbyn.
This Constituency Labour Party expresses no confidence in any of the signatories to this advert, and in particular no confidence in Lord Roger Liddle and calls for him to be expelled from the Labour Party because he has brought the Party into disrepute.
Within days of this, North West Durham CLP passed an almost identical resolution, by a three to one margin, but naming instead Guardian ad signatory Baroness Hilary Armstrong, formerly the MP for the area. These two CLPs, meeting within days of each other, show the anger of Party members to open sabotage of Corbyn’s leadership.
Not a single one of the signatories to this disgraceful advert would have consulted their local Labour Party members or the members in seats where they used to be Members of Parliament. They might owe their positions in the Lords to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown but they also owe their privileged life-styles and public life to the thousands of ordinary Labour Party members who flogged their guts out for them over many years and who are now being kicked in the teeth.
The national press has picked up the fact that these resolutions were passed and on Friday, Gloria de Piero resigned her position as a front bench justice spokesperson, denouncing the “intolerance” in the Party. “Jeremy was right that we need a gentler, kinder politics”, she bleated to the Guardian correspondent, “But that’s not always what we have. We all need to listen to each other and respect each other.”
This statement is itself dripping with hypocrisy. The reference to “intolerance” is in no way intended as a criticism of Labour’s right wing, who work hand-in-glove with the anti-Labour press and BBC to present petitions and organise full-page adverts to undermine Corbyn. The “tolerance” they demand is only for the right-wing, while up and down the country left-wing members of the Party are being suspended or expelled on the most flimsy pretexts.
The Guardian advert has followed closely on the heels of the equally disgraceful and wholly one-sided BBC Panorama programme, after which the Labour peer Diane Hayter likened Jeremy Corby to Hitler in his bunker. So much for “tolerance”! When the right-wing hurl insults at the twice-elected Party leader, we are all supposed to sit back and do nothing, but when we object to their activity and pass resolutions, we are accused of being “intolerant”. The fact is that the right wing have never been and will never be reconciled to a radical Labour Party and they would sooner Labour lose an election than see Corbyn in Number Ten.
Some supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have pushed the panic button at the tactics of the right wing and their faux outrage at Labour party members and CLPs expressing their views. But we have to hit back as hard as they hit us.
There is an undeclared civil war in the Labour Party at the present time, but it is being conducted almost entirely by one side – by the old-guard Blairites, with the support of the national anti-Labour media, the BBC and all their public connections and influence – to damage the Labour Party. Labour Party members have to hit back just as hard. Resolutions like that above should be moved in CLPs up and down the country.
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Labour Party branches everywhere – and branches of affiliated trades unions – should discuss the relentless sabotage that is now ongoing and condemn the attempts of the right wing to stymie a Labour victory in a general election whenever it comes. The peers who signed the disgraceful advert in the Guardian may have used a Labour logo, but they represent nothing at the grass-roots of the Party.
July 21, 2019
