'We’ve Lost the Keys'

by Les May

I joined Rochdale Young Socialists in August 1960.  A month later, I was outside the Scarborough Conference demonstrating my support for a motion proposing unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Famously Hugh Gaitskell who was leader of the Labour Party at the time said;

‘We may lose the vote today, and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent this, but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable.  There are some of us, Mr Chairman, who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love.  We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party -- with its great past -- may retain its glory and its greatness.’

Labour was deeply divided over the issue, but it is generally accepted that Gaitskell, ‘lost the vote and won the argument’.  When he was challenged for the leadership by Harold Wilson, who presented himself as a ‘unity not civil war’ candidate and who shared Gaitskell’s scepticism about unilateralism, Gaitskell got two thirds of the vote, which at that time was confined to Labour MPs.

Sixty years later the arguments remain the same.   Is it Labour MPs who should determine policy and select the leader, or is it the wider membership of the Labour party?   Speaking today on BB2’s Politics Live programme Angela Smith, one of the ‘Not So Magnificent Seven’ who resigned from the party today, rather gave the game away when she said ‘We’ve lost the keys’.  Like it or not, after 2015 we have seen a power shift within the Labour party, away from MPs and to the members.

Unsurprisingly Labour members like it that way and are ready to be critical of their MP when they feel he or she is being less than supportive of Corbyn’s leadership and/or party policy.   They may have a point.  There are some constituencies which are ‘solid Labour’, but in most it takes a lot of effort by local Labour members to ‘get the vote out’.

Another of the MPs who left Labour, Luciana Berger, has successfully managed to conflate two quite separate issues; criticism of Corbyn and anti-semitism. Until they were withdrawn her local party was set to debate two motions;

'The UK is in crisis because of the appalling austerity policies of a government that serves the interests of the rich.  We need a Labour government under the socialist leadership of our twice-elected leader Jeremy Corbyn. Instead of fighting for a Labour government our MP is continually using the media to criticise the man we all want to be Prime Minister.

'The Tories are deeply divided, but millions are still suffering from their austerity policies.  We desperately need a socialist Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn.  Our MP is continually criticising our leader when she should be working for a general election and opposing the Tories.'

Not by any stretch of the imagination can either of these be described as ‘anti-semitic’.  Nor do they seem to me to justify Chuka Umunna’s comment quoted in the Jewish Chronicle, ‘How about demanding her CLP treats her with the respect she deserves?’  Clearly Chuka still has not yet got used to the idea that Labour MPs are no longer in the driving seat.

That’s not to say that Berger has not been subjected to antisemitic abuse, she has.  But the evidence points to the fact that it is coming from people who have nothing to do with the Labour party.  This is what Wikipedia has to say:

‘In January 2013, it was reported that a Merseyside music promoter, Philip Hayes, had been convicted of a racially aggravated public order offence and fined £120 after an "antisemitic tirade" against Berger at the Liverpool Music Awards.

'In October 2014, Garron Helm, a member of the small neo-Nazi National Action youth group was imprisoned for four weeks after he sent an antisemitic tweet to Berger in August 2014, serving two weeks before being released.  Following the conviction, it was reported that similar messages to her were being posted on Twitter.  According to Berger in December 2014, "[a]t the height of the abuse, the police said I was the subject of 2,500 hate messages in the space of three days" using the same hashtag.

'During the 2015 general election, UK Independence Party parliamentary candidate for West Lancashire Jack Sen was suspended from the party after sending an allegedly antisemitic tweet to Berger.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine , a supporter of Helm, was convicted of racially-aggravated harassment of Berger in December 2016 and sentenced to two years.

'In February 2017, John Nimmo was sentenced to 27 months in prison after pleading guilty to nine charges, including the sending of death threats and antisemitic messages to Berger.’

What Wikipedia also tells us it that in March 2018 Berger used Twitter to ask Jeremy Corbyn why he had queried the removal by a local council of an allegedly anti-semitic mural in 2012.   Using Twitter to do this rather than speaking to him directly or writing to him, suggests to me deliberate intent to cause trouble for Corbyn. 

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