Jewish representative group stands up for Ken Loach
Ken Loach: he has been maligned with false allegations by a group that claims to represent all Jews in the Labour Party – but doesn’t.
How shaming for the Jewish Labour Movement, whose members don’t have to be either Jewish or Labour Party members, to be undermined by an organisation in which members must be both.
The JLM wrote to MPs and councillors in northeast England, trying to drum up sentiment against North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll, and support for the decision to leave him off the long list of candidates for the new North East Mayoralty.
The reason for this exhortation? Mr Driscoll and Mr Loach once attended an event and shared a platform together. By the same token, Keir Starmer should be barred from seeking re-election, having shared a Question Time panel with Mr Loach.
The celebrated British movie director has been expelled from Labour – but nobody seems to know the reason. Claims of anti-Semitism have been demonstrated to be false, so the party is unable to use them.
And now Jewish Voice for Labour has also written to MPs and councillors in northeast England, offering a more balanced perspective than that of the JLM.
But read it for yourself. The organisation’s letter states:
We are saddened and angry at the Jewish Labour Movement’s letter sent to MPs and Councillors in northeast England about the mayoral candidates’ selection process in the region. The JLM has no right to claim that it represents all Jews in the Labour Party and our organisation, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), was set up precisely because it did not.
We note Martin Forde KC’s comment that antisemitism has been weaponised in the Labour Party and used in factional disputes.
The decision to deprive Party members in the North East of the opportunity to consider Jamie Driscoll as a candidate for the forthcoming Mayoral election, with no reason given and no right of appeal, is anti-democratic. It is the very opposite of “defending the integrity of our party” as JLM suggests.
The JLM and others have loudly denounced Driscoll for sharing a platform with Ken Loach on the grounds that he had been expelled by the Party, insinuating that the expulsion was for antisemitism, recycling a catalogue of old allegations against him. Driscoll’s alleged crime was to have taken part with Loach in a discussion about his three latest films. Not only does this take “guilt by association” to an absurd level. It also accepts without challenge a ragbag of allegations against Loach. This conforms to the repeated pattern of attacks on vociferous supporters or Palestinian rights which appear designed to silence them.
Ken Loach is a man known across the globe for an unparalleled body of radical, campaigning work in film over more than half a century.
Instead of looking into this background, those attacking Ken Loach have presented the passionately held opinions of this committed, lifelong antiracist as if they were expressions of antisemitism.
JVL has provided short responses to each of the allegations against one of the UK’s most prestigious film makers, which can be found in this article (from which the above is extracted): In Support of Ken Loach, Free Speech and Democracy | Jewish Voice for Labour
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