Should Green Writers Boycott Left Foot Forward Over Anti-Semitism Smear Story?

A post on the website Left Foot Forward claiming that Shahrar Ali, one of the current candidates for the leadership of the Green party, and a former deputy leader, is anti-Semitic has caused outrage among grass root members of the party. The post, which has been through several edits from what was originally posted on 3 August, is a fine example of bad journalism and pretty much a textbook case of fake news. The full video of the speech is now displayed.

Highly selective quotations from a speech by Ali were first posted, from a 2009 rally against Israeli military forces attacking the Gaza strip, Operation Cast Lead, where about 1,500 Palestinian civilians were killed, were used. Ali’s speech was aimed at supporters of the Israeli action in western countries, but was twisted by the Left Foot Forward website to imply it was aimed at Jewish people more generally. The story is confected.

Mainstream media in the guise of the London Evening Standard, which has been running anti-Semitic themed attacks on the Labour party, amongst other themes, on an almost daily basis for the past couple of years, has now run the story. The paper is edited by former Tory chancellor George Osborne.

The Left Foot Forward post reports a complaint to the Green party by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, a group that was formed in 2014 to challenge anti-Semitism in the UK, which has frequently complained about Labour party members, including the leader, Jeremy Corbyn. The Green party has said that it is looking into the matter.

Quite why a website like Left Foot Forward is spreading a reheated story and video used by the Alt-Right Breitbart news network is something of a mystery to me. What is so Left about spreading right-wing smears and propaganda? Is this what the trade unions funding Left Foot Forward had in mind when setting up the site? You do have to wonder.

The piece was written by Left Foot Forward editor, Josiah Mortimer, a Labour party member who supports Corbyn’s leadership, and former Green party member, who became editor about twelve months ago. So, again I’m left wondering why should someone with that kind of politics write such a post? What is the motivation?

The story has topical value of course, with voting still open in the Green party elections for leader and other roles until the end of August. The only thing that I can think of is it is a desperate attempt to raise the viewing figures of his website with sensationalist, but inaccurate news stories. Are the numbers down or something?

I know Shahrar, and he is a passionate anti-racism campaigner who champions the cause of the oppressed, often the Palestinians, by questioning the role of the Israeli state in such oppression. He is not anti-Semitic, he is anti the terrible human rights record of the state of Israel and its military forces, quite rightly. The Israeli lobby is quick to call people anti-Semitic when Israel is criticised, as a tactic to silence those who oppose their actions, but I am shocked that a left-wing website would support this kind of bullying.

Genuine anti-Semitism should not be tolerated, and likening the actions of Israel to the Nazi’s is inaccurate, and given historical events, is grossly insensitive and should be avoided. But that is not case with this story anyway, where Ali did no such thing. Although, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was, by reading Mortimer’s post.

Plenty of Green party people have contributed to Left Foot Forward, Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones, Natalie Bennett and indeed this writer. We should ask ourselves this question though, 'do I want to be associated with a media outlet that peddles fake news like this, and is aimed at smearing the Green party?' Reputation in politics is something that can be tarnished easily and is often judged on who you associate with. It can be difficult to restore.  

Photos - Massive End Austerity Demo - London - 20 June 2015

A massive anti-austerity march and rally took place today in London today, I would say at the very least 100,000 but probably a good deal more. Organisers said it could be as high as 250,000 (including Glasgow and Liverpool protests). Whatever the figure, it was largest protest that I have been on since the anti-Iraq war marches more than 10 years ago.

A large Green Bloc was in evidence, which I was very pleased about. We staked out our ant-austerity ground during the general election campaign and this turn out just reinforces Green party image of us fighting against the savage government cuts expected in this Parliament from the Tories.

Meeting up at outside of the Bank of England

Noel Lynch of Green Left

Martin Francis of Green Left

Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas at the head of the Green Bloc

Rally at Parliament Square

Pete Murry of Green Left

Romayne Phoenix of Green Left welcomes the marchers to the rally with a barnstorming speech

This is just the start of a series of protests including some direct action and maybe some industrial action too. Let's make things as difficult as we can for the Tory government as they try to dismantle the welfare state for their own purely ideological reasons.

Are We Greens too Left Wing for our own Good?

There is debate starting in the Green party about whether our pitch at this year’s general election was too left wing. An ex Green chair in a letter to the Guardian states that ‘prospective supporters were rightly horrified at the leader’s focus on leftist anti-austerity rhetoric’ and should instead have ‘appealed to wavering Tory and Liberal Democrat voters’.

Then a piece appeared in the New Statesman which quoted amongst others, Darren Hall, Green party target candidate for Bristol West, entitled ‘This left wing label is potentially unhelpful: the Greens on why they missed their moment.’ The author, Tim Wigmore, bestows the wisdom to readers that ‘successful Green parties in Europe have cultivated an unthreatening image to win favour with the urban middle-class’.

He contrasts this to the English (and Welsh) Green party leader Natalie Bennett’s emphasis on a range of policies ‘too zany to countenance’. Wigmore does seem to confuse left wing and hippy though, which is not the same thing at all – I’ve known plenty of right wing hippies in my time. He also, rather unconvincingly, dismisses the UK’s electoral system as a cause of our electoral difficulties compared to that of other countries.

I think Natalie Bennett did focus too much on some of our more peripheral polices at times, but again this is not the same thing as left wing. She should have perhaps stuck more to our policies on, building council houses, rather than people being allowed to marry more than one partner, for example. But in the main over the last few years, I think that we got across our policies pretty well.

I think it is extremely irrational to argue that a party that just got a result four times better (for votes) than ever before should somehow return to single issue environmental concerns or tack to the already overcrowded party political right. What distinguished the Greens from all of the other main parties was our left wing agenda at this election. The Lib Dems under Nick Clegg completely abandoned the left ground staked out by the previous leader Charles Kennedy, with their coalition with the Tories. Labour under Tony Blair abandoned this left ground twenty years ago. Furthermore, for the future, Labour is likely to shift back the millimetre or two to the left that Labour led by Ed Miliband managed to occupy. 

The Green party has been moving to the left over recent years for a very good reason, these voters were pretty much disenfranchised by Labour’s then the Lib Dems full embrace of neo-liberal politics. What we have not been that successful at, until very recently, is getting that message across to the voters, and we still by and large have not managed to do this with working class voters.

I joined the Green party over nine years ago, and what attracted me were the leftish social policies, although I had become very concerned about man made climate change too. I was thoroughly disillusioned with new Labour and on joining the Greens found that I was not alone in my local party in this outlook. Many ex Labour members and supporters were joining, for broadly the same reasons. The left policies were always there, people just didn’t know about them, and to some extent still do not.

Membership of the Green party when I joined was around 5,000 to 6,000, now it is over 70,000 (in England and Wales). Why on earth should we revert to a narrow environmental focus, or change to more right wing policies when the problems of social and ecological justice are so profoundly linked? And change a strategy that is paying dividends?

We see in Greece and Spain that discredited economic policies pursued by nominally ‘socialist’ parties are being replaced by new parties of the left, who are popular with the voters. The problems in those countries are more acute than in the UK, but this trend is appearing here too, most notably exploited by the SNP in Scotland, but in England there is only the Greens. It’s no brainer really.

       

Photos - Queen's Speech Anti Tory Demo - London

Around 3,000 people demonstrated outside Parliament today, against the Tory austerity policies as outlined in the Queen's speech to the opening of the new Parliament. The demo was organised by the People's Assembly.

Pete Murry, Will Holyday and Martin Francis of Green Left

Romayne Phoenix of Green Left

Scuffles with police break out on Whitehall

More scuffles in Parliament Square

Mark Serwotka of the PCS union

Kate Hudson of CND and Left Unity

Lynsey German of Stop the War

Natalie Bennett of the Green Party

John Rees of Counterfire