A fringe event at Labour conference has heard calls to expel Jewish activists from the party, while a speaker compared Israel to Nazis and the audience was banned from tweeting in an attempt to silence “hostile” coverage. The room echoed its agreement as a speaker protested that the Jewish Labour Movement was given a campaigning awarded yesterday, instead calling for the group and Labour Friends of Israel to be “kicked out” of the party. A speaker, Miko Peled, said Israel and Israelis should not be treated differently to white South Africans during Apartheid or Nazis. He claimed Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza. He said those present should stop calling Israel by its name, a view taken up by other speakers who then referred to it only as “the Zionist state”. The notorious Tony Greenstein, who was suspended by Labour for ranting about “Zionist scum” was applauded, and there were cheers for Ken Livingstone.
The fringe event was titled “Free Speech on Israel” – the chair Naomi Wimborne ordered the audience not to tweet, take pictures, film or record the event because there may be “hostile” people present. Guido recorded the entire event. Wimborne interrupted proceedings halfway through to order a young man to stop tweeting. Not sure the “Free Speech” campaigners got the irony…
UPDATE: Jeremy Newmark, Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement responds:
“This is a thinly veiled call to purge Jews from the Labour Party. It is a stark example of why Party Conference must vote decidedly tomorrow to pass JLM’s Rule Change on antisemitism. The group whose meeting provided an arena for this hate speech was allowed to advertise it official Party literature. That is far from the zero tolerance on antisemtism that the leadership have promised.”
UPDATE II: Jennifer Gerber, LFI Director said:
“It’s beyond disgraceful that today at Labour Party Conference there have been calls to expel Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement from the party. Supporting the world’s only Jewish state is a mainstream and long-standing Labour position. We hope the Labour Party leadership acts swiftly to condemn those who seek to bully pro-Israel and Jewish members out of the party.”
How’s this for a conference laugh. Labour’s “Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament” Fabian Hamilton has recounted the tale of what happened when Emily Thornberry met the Foreign Office permanent under-secretary Sir Simon McDonald during the election to discuss the event of a Labour win. The plan for day one: appoint a Cabinet minister with responsibility to disarm the UK…
“Just before the General Election on June 8th, Emily Thornberry and Jennifer Larbie, Head of International Policy for Jeremy’s Office, they went to see Sir Simon McDonald who is the Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, that means by the way that he is the boss, he’s the senior United Kingdom Diplomat… When Emily and Jennifer put to Sir Simon that the idea that if we won on Thursday and if we win in the future – when we win in the future – we will create, because it’s in the manifesto, a Minister, a Secretary of State, a Cabinet role, for Peace and Disarmament, and that would include the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And McDonald’s reply was: ‘Brilliant, that’s a really good idea.'”
Oh to have seen Sir Simon’s face…
Speaking at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament fringe meeting, Hamilton also recounted a phone call with Corbyn during which he said the Labour leader reiterated his opposition to nuclear weapons:
“He [Jeremy Corbyn] said: ‘You and I have been active in Parliamentary CND and I have always taken the view that our independent nuclear deterrent is a waste of money and worse.'”
A member of Labour’s National Policy Forum outlined plans to bring forward motions at next year’s conference to make nuclear disarmament official party policy. George Downs said scrapping nukes was “Jeremy’s vision” and the left’s capture of the party’s Conference Arrangements Committee could be used to bring it about:
“Fingers crossed this time next year we will be debating the National Policy Forum Report which includes nuclear disarmament, but if not a contemporary motion which isn’t ruled out of order by this new Conference Arrangements Committee, and we can get Labour Party policy which is in line with Jeremy’s vision.”
Could unilateral disarmament become official Labour policy this time next year?
Labour conference rolled into Brighton today and the town came to a standstill for an anti-Brexit, open-borders march convened by hard left group Movement for Justice by Any Means Necessary. Protesters chanted “Brexit is racist” outside the conference venue, speakers denounced the Home Office and immigration detention centers as “racist” and shouted: “open the borders”. One banner read: “Communism not Corbynism, Abolish the Police, Smash the Borders”…
Anti-fascist and anarchist flags were also on display:
Welcome to Brighton…
when ur press accreditation for labour conference gets declined cos the cops think ur a security risk 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/uWoGs9p7aV
— Michael Segalov (@MikeSegalov) September 20, 2017
Michael Segalov is a Corbynista journalist from Vice, best known for ruining a Tim Farron photo op. That moment when your party is taken over by nutters and the police won’t let them attend your conference…
Theresa May’s Brexit supremo Olly Robbins is a former Soviet sympathiser who opposed capitalism, praised Soviet leaders and lamented the demise of Communist Russia, Guido can reveal. As as a student at Hertford College, Oxford in the nineties, “Red Robbins” wrote an article in praise of Soviet Russia for the Oxford Reform Club magazine. In a rewriting of history that would have made Seumas Milne blush, the PM’s new star Number 10 hire wrote:
“The Russian state has endured more than any other major nation in the twentieth century, and has achieved more too… I would never disagree that some of the deeds done in the name of communism were evil, but it is as well to look at the era’s aims and achievements. First among these were the aims of free and fair education, housing and healthcare. These were also the main planks of the post-war consensus here in Britain, and could hardly be described as evil. What is more, they were achieved. More Russians can read than Britons, there are almost no homeless people in Moscow, unlike London… Another achievement was the making of a state, a world power indeed, and one that its people could be proud of. The Soviet leaders changed Russia from a backward peasant autocracy, despised by the West, into a technological giant at whom the world cowered in fear for half a century.”
Red Robbins then lamented the fall of the Soviet Union as meaning there is no longer an alternative to the real baddie: capitalism.
“The demise of the Soviet experiment means that for those growing up in the world today, especially western Europe, there appears to be no alternative to the mad excesses of modern capitalism. To the thinking man and woman, Soviet Russia may not have been ideal, but it was food for thought in the “greed is good” climate of the 1980’s.”
The article concludes that it is unfair to say communism failed because the ravages of Russia’s Tsarist past meant “the experiment was hardly conducted in fair conditions”. A friend of Robbins confirmed he wrote the article but declined to comment on his past views.
So the top civil servant in charge of Brexit is only a former Soviet fanboy who defended Stalin and implied communism was preferable to capitalism. We knew Olly was a Remainer, but we didn’t think he’d be such a keen supporter of the crowning principles behind Juncker’s democracy-hating EU super-state speech last week. On the plus side, Red Robbins will get on famously with Seumas if Corbyn makes it to Number 10…
A Labour Party and Momentum official sports the flag of North Korea in her Twitter bio and says she has “solidarity” with the communist pariah state:
Sarah Cundy, who is the Canterbury CLP Youth Officer and Canterbury Momentum Chair, reckons the DPRK is “willing to stand up to imperialism” and “has weapons to keep themselves and their population safe”, concluding “I’d rather have solidarity with DPRK than the USA”:
She is pictured above with Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry and Canterbury Labour MP Rosie Duffield. Are they going to have a word?
