Labour’s NEC proscribes Labour Left Alliance, reportedly due to its stance on antisemitism
The Labour Party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) has proscribed the Labour Left Alliance, reportedly due to the faction’s stance on antisemitism.
Labour Left Alliance is a member-based group with close links to Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour In Exile Network, which were among four groups banned by the NEC last July. Labour Against the Witchhunt has since disbanded, with its members focusing their energies on other groups instead.
Twenty members of the NEC voted in favour of the proscription of Labour Left Alliance at yesterday’s full meeting, while eleven voted against.
The ban on another group, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, was divided on the same lines, while the vote to ban Socialist Labour Network was split nineteen to eleven. The latter two groups are not believed to have been proscribed in connection with antisemitism.
A spokesperson for the Labour Party said: “The NEC has decided that these organisations are not compatible with Labour’s rules, or our aims and values.”
The Labour MP and Corbyn ally, Clive Lewis, tweeted: “Proscription lists; mass expulsions; the centralisation of power. It’s naive to think the ‘crisis of democracy’ and the slide to authoritarianism afflicting western polities won’t affect our own political institutions.”
However, the NEC declared that there are no plans to proscribe another controversial pro-Corbyn group, Momentum. It is reported that NEC papers read: “Custom and practice also establishes that the definition of a ‘political organisation’ does not include organisations that are compatible with the aims and values of the Labour Party…This includes networks of members, such as Sikhs for Labour or the Labour Muslim Network; single issue campaigns, such as Labour for a Green New Deal; and ginger groups, such as Labour First, Momentum, and Progress.”
A meeting earlier this month of Labour Left Alliance featured questions from Tony Greenstein and Gerry Downing, both of whom have been expelled from the Labour Party. Mr Downing was a founder of Labour Against the Witchhunt, and at this meeting he referenced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity and declared his support for Russia in its invasion of its neighbour. Tina Werkmann, who was chairing the meeting, then said about Mr Downing’s comments: “About Zelenskyy being Jewish I think this is a very dodgy territory to go down it’s not his Jewishness that is the problem it’s that he’s a Zionist and he works with fascists. Zionism and fascists they can work very well together and they have done in the past and they go hand in hand in Britain as well. So that’s not an issue. But I don’t think we need to peddle antisemitism crap here in this section.”
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism: “We commend the NEC for banning Labour Left Alliance, which is another important step in the fight against antisemitism and antisemitism-denial in the Labour Party. It is regrettable that Momentum has been given a new lease on life, however, which risks the Party looking like it only goes after low hanging fruit. We have always been clear that this process would take years, and yesterday’s NEC vote shows that progress is being made, but slowly.”
The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
Image credit: Harry’s Place
