Support builds for Loach after racist Labour shoots itself in the foot AGAIN

Ken Loach: he has good reason to smile because good people are supporting him.

Good people have lined up to support calls to reinstate legendary film director Ken Loach into the Labour Party. As for his detractors – well, let’s judge them by their actions.

One such detractor is Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (the Labour-affiliated organisation whose members have to be neither members of the Labour Party or Jews).

He tweeted an ignorant screed against Mr Loach on Saturday (August 14) that attractedThis Writer’s eye – and my ire – as follows:

He hasn’t replied. How could he? he knows I’m right.

So he did what they all do when they’re found out: he ran away like a scalded alley cat.

I’m only surprised that the tweet is still up.

Mr Loach’s position on the Holocaust has since been clarified by his supporters:

On the other hand, members of Labour’s Socialist Campaign Group have made a statement in support of Mr Loach, signed by 21 Labour MPs plus Jeremy Corbyn and Claudia Webbe, who are currently bereft of the Labour whip after previous examples of spite by their party leader:

https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1427257347509002241

It says: “We strongly oppose the expulsion of Ken Loach from the Labour Party and call for his membership to be immediately reinstated.

“Ken is an outstanding socialist and a fierce opponent of discrimination in all its forms, whose work has done more than any other living British filmmaker to shine a light on injustice and oppression. The values embodied in his films – solidarity, compassion, equality – should be the values proudly championed by our party. That Ken is expelled while Islamophobes are welcomed is shameful, and suggests the party leadership is drifting yet further away from these values.

“These attacks are aimed at demoralising and pushing socialist members away from the party. But the only way to return our socialist and internationalist principles to the heart of British politics is for Labour members to stay in the party and champion them. The socialist leadership that hundreds of thousands of you made possible need not be consigned to the past of our party. It can be the future. Let’s fight for it together.”

“Islamophobes are welcomed” seems to be a clear reference to Trevor Phillips, the alleged Islamophobe who is a close friend of Peter Mandelson (with whom Keir Starmer has been chumming up lately) and a member of Starmer’s own Labour Party branch. It is believed that Starmer demanded his reinstatement. Knowing this, the line appears to be an attack on Labour’s current leader.

The last paragraph seems overly hopeful at a time when Starmer appears to be succeeding in pushing people out of the once-great Labour Party by the thousands. Still, we may look forward to the autumn party conference, at which a series of socialist motions are likely to be debated that may push back his tide of intolerance, racism and fascism.

Sadly, people have been lining up on the other side of the fence, to support Mr Loach’s expulsion – by calling for the party whip to be withdrawn from the Socialist Campaign Group MPs who opposed it. They’re the same old faces as usual, pushing the same sad attack lines – and their words were reported in the same old rag: the Jewish Chronicle:

Katz is among them, along with Euan Philipps of disgraced hate group Labour Against Anti-Semitism and Luke Akehurst – the Labour NEC member who lost his seat on Oxford City Council in May after (it is said) Muslims withdrew their vote:

And far-right ex-Labour bully-boy Ian Austin was also among those baying for blood. His attack on Jewish MP Jon Trickett rated an article of itself from Skwawkbox – and don’t you love the image illustrating it?

Austin is infamous as the MP who heckled Jeremy Corbyn from his own benches when he criticised Tony Blair’s 2003 invasion of Iraq:

We must conclude that Austin was 100 per cent behind the invasion of Afghanistan as well – and look at the way that has turned out!

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s programme to eliminate “the wrong kind of Jew” is continuing, as the following examples demonstrate clearly:

It seems clear that, if anybody should be removed from the Labour Party then it should not be Ken Loach or the 23 people who signed the Socialist Campaign Group’s statement.

It should be Mike Katz. It should be Ian Austin. It should be Euan Philipps, Luke Akehurst, Trevor Phillips and Peter Mandelson. And above all, it should be Keir Starmer. We all know that. But can we make it happen?

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4 Comments

  1. Stephen Brophy August 19, 2021 at 11:25 am - Reply

    every decent socialist should boycott labour in the next election if ghouls like starmer and his despicable horde remain! labour being a broad church was always a lie used by secret tories to hide within! the PLP, labour should only allow decent honest people, in short socialist. that is my view! I can’t see it happening any other way!

  2. Voice of Treason August 19, 2021 at 11:59 am - Reply

    I so wish the party would expel the entire SCG or at least withdraw the whip. It might finally wake them up and prompt them to do something. If they split en masse and formed a new party, with Corbyn and McDonnell in it, they would have 300,000 active, enthusiastic members by the end of the year and take several unions with them. The rump Labour Party would quickly go bankrupt. The new party could make an electoral pact with the Greens and would soon overtake the old party in councillors and MPs. The next election is lost anyway, but the one after that would see a new government for the people at last. I cannot see any other way now.

  3. Edward Hill August 19, 2021 at 12:21 pm - Reply

    To be fair to Luke Akehurst (a questionable notion, I agree), although Muslim voters may have had good reasons not to vote for him, he did not actually lose HIS seat on Oxford City Council. In May he stood for election, and failed to win, as one of two Labour candidates in St. Mary’s ward, which elected a Green councillor in both 2016 and 2018, so unsurprisingly elected two Green councillors in May. (see Oxford City Council website.)

  4. beastrabban August 19, 2021 at 5:34 pm - Reply

    Corbyn was absolutely right to oppose the Iraq invasion. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, and Bush and Blair lied to us when they said that he did. If you read Greg Palast’s book, ‘Armed Madhouse’, it’s very clear that the invasion was launched to enable Aramco, the American-Saudi oil company, to steal the Iraqi oil reserves. Plus Halliburton and the rest of the multinationals wanted to loot the country’s state enterprises. Ian Austin is a disgrace for supporting the invasion, and an utter, contemptible disgrace for continuing to smear decent, highly principled people as anti-Semites.

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