Blackmailers Always Want More by Les May

AFTER Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the Labour party the Guardian newspaper opened its comment column to Margaret Hodge. Her article is high on opinions, hers, resorts to generalisations, ‘the hard left’, complains about online conspiracy theories, which originate abroad and have nothing whatsoever to do with the Labour party, and dismisses as ‘fantastical’ the notion that she and her acolytes sought to ‘weaponise anti-semitism’, a view that is shared by many Labour supporting people I know.

Here’s an example.

In the article she claimed; ‘Only last week, the trade union leader Len McCluskey repeated a common antisemitic trope on television when attacking Peter Mandelson.’ But a more detailed account in the Jewish News, an online publication of the Times of Israel, which I quote verbatim, suggests a very different interpretation.

The Unite union’s general secretary, a leading ally of Jeremy Corbyn, made his comments on BBC Newsnight after reporter Lewis Goodall told him that former cabinet minister Lord Mandelson had been 'nothing but full of praise for Keir Starmer' in an interview.

Len McCluskey responded: 'I stopped listening to what Peter Mandelson said many, many years ago. I would suggest Peter just goes into a room and counts his gold. Not worrying about what’s happening in the Labour Party – leave that to those of us who are interested in ordinary working class people.'

Mr Goodall had said earlier in his report that 'When Mr McCluskey sat down with me, he used language that could be considered an antisemitic trope.'

After the Newsnight report looking into Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership and the future of the Labour party was aired, a clarification of Len McCluskey’s comments was read out.

The statement by Unite the union said:

'Mr Mandelson’s religion was not relevant to the comments made by Mr McCluskey. Indeed to the best of our knowledge Mr Mandelson is not Jewish.

'The ordinary meaning of the statement made by Mr McCluskey is one of his belief that in recent years Mr Mandelson has had more interest in increasing his own wealth than fighting for justice for working class people. The suggestion of any antisemitic meaning to the commentary would be ludicrous.'

Lord Mandelson is not religiously observant but his grandfather founded the Harrow United Synagogue.’

At this point you might ask yourself if you knew that Mandelson had Jewish ancestry and whether knowing it now makes any difference to your opinion of him. As for ‘counting his gold’; in August 2011 the media showed considerable interest in how he could afford an £8 million pound house and in January 2009 the Evening Standard published the results of its detailed investigation into how he could afford to buy his £2.5 million pound Regency Villa.

Hodge shows far more interest in the Jewish ancestry of herself and others than I can muster. And, as in this case, she’s always ready to ‘play the race card’ when it suits her, though she is hardly the first politician to do this.

In July 2018 she called Corbyn a ‘fucking racist and antisemite’ in the chamber of the House of Commons. Her response to hints that she might face being reported to the Whips, and face a disciplinary inquiry was to give an interview to Sky News and say: 'On the day that I heard that they were going to discipline me and possibly suspend me, it felt almost like, I kept thinking what did it feel like to be a Jew in Germany in the Thirties?' For ITV News this was: 'Because it felt almost as if they were coming for me. It’s rather difficult to define, but there’s that fear… '

This must surely be one of the most preposterous exaggerations that any politician has ever uttered. To try to draw a comparison with what happened to many Jewish people and many others in Nazi Germany in the 1930s beggars belief. And then she has the gall to use the word ‘fanatastical’ about other people!

Hodge’s response to the Unite statement was to say: ‘Regardless, he doesn’t get to obfuscate and dictate to us what is and is not anti-Semitic when called out. The ignorance with which these tropes are used by McCluskey and others shows just how pervasive and unchallenged antisemitism is on the Hard Left.’

Aside from the fact that comments in a similar vein about Mandelson are unlikely to be confined to what she calls the Hard Left, it seems clear that the intention of Hodge and those who think like her is to insist that they, and they alone, have the right to decide what is, and what is not, anti-semitic.

We have already seen this used to attack Livingstone, Corbyn and McCluskey, allowing her view to prevail would have implications, not just for the Labour party, but for the whole of civil society. In February of this year Lisa Nandy said that if she became leader she would try to go further than accepting the IHRA definition of anti-Jewish hatred. This is some of what the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has to say about that definition.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by western governments, is worded in such a way as to be easily adopted or considered by western governments to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, as a means to suppress the former. This conflation undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.

In September 2018 Hodge excused her calling Corbyn a ‘fucking racist and antisemite’ on the grounds that she had just learned that Labour’s NEC had declined to adopt the IHRA definition.

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