“A boast is aimed at those who would care But the braggart says his best and still there’s no one there The compliment that’s intended to flatter Is ignored — its target is engaged in some other matter. Instruction and advice fall on deaf ears They are the distilled extracts of our fears We’d rather get morals from some silly pop song…” — From Kaaley Koo Aaagey Dhaklo, by Bachchoo Diane Abbot, the “mother” of the House of Commons, is the longest-serving female Member of Parliament representing an East London constituency as a Labour member. Last week, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government withdrew the whip from Ms Abbot, leaving her as an Independent MP for the second time under Mr Starmer’s leadership of Labour. Her first and second exclusions, or suspensions, originate from the same offence. She was first suspended from Labour when it was still in Opposition. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn had suffered a massive defeat when the Tories won the 2019 election. Diane, a black woman of Caribbean descent, had been a close ideological comrade of Mr Corbyn and a spokesperson in his shadow cabinet. After Mr Corbyn’s defeat the party elected Sir Keir Starmer as leader and he set about purging the party of those he defined as anti-Semites, including Jeremy Corbyn, who was accused by the European Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHCR) of, at the least, failing to tackle and quash the rise of anti-Semitic sentiments and pronouncements during his leadership of Labour. His successor suspended — virtually expelled — him from the party. But not Diane Abbot, Mr Corbyn’s close associate — yet! That followed when Diane wrote a newspaper article which said that the racism that black people suffered was very different — and by implication more life-destroying — than that faced by Jews, Irish, gay people and, she added, perhaps frivolously, “redheads”. Thunder, lightning and severe climate catastrophe in the teacup. The Starmer government deemed this to be anti-Semitic and Ms Abbot was, in this first instance, suspended from the Labour Party. Diane did, in some clumsy way, scramble to explain. She publicly apologised and said the statement that she had issued had been distorted and wasn’t, as published, quite what she had intended. Nevertheless, Keir Starmer was intent on his purges and winning back the vote of the Jewish population, which had traditionally, throughout the 20h century, been always with Labour. Diane was hung out to dry. The teacup was then subject not to storms but to a leftish earthquake. Diane had massive support from the public and even in the left-wing and among the old guard of the Labour Party. Come the 2024 election, Sir Keir reinstated her, mouthing all manner of praise for her long-standing commitment to Labour. She won her seat. Then last week she again publicly said that she stood by the original article for which she was first suspended, as she sincerely believed that black people were subject to racism when they were identified by their skin colour, which was not possible really with Jews or Irish or gay people. This time she left redheads out of the contention. Oh… that teacup! Stirred by eternal illiteracy — or possibly international Foreign Office considerations — Keir Starmer suspended Diane again. Gentle reader, I know Diane — an acquaintance rather than a friend — and was naturally surprised at this development and Keir Starmer’s cowardly kowtowing to some censorious lobbies. Nowhere had Diane said anything about Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on and genocide in Gaza. Nowhere had she even hinted that the Holocaust didn’t happen or that Hitler hadn’t committed one of the greatest atrocities in human history. Nowhere did Diane say anything about Judaism. She didn’t even assert that she and black Caribbeans and Americans were the descendants of the slaves captured by Europeans — a historical atrocity of incalculable injustice and horror. No, that wasn’t her point. It was much simpler — blacks are identifiable by the police, who stop and search black youths for drugs and weapons. White youth are not picked on in the same way (I am saying this as a corollary to Diane’s argument — she didn’t even go into such specific instances!) Though all the media reported this second suspension of Ms Abbot from the Labour Party, only one journalist, Jason Okundaye of the Guardian, ventured to question its justness. His article began by quoting the TV confrontation between Darcus Howe, the brilliant presenter of a series called Devil’s Advocate, and Bernie Grant, then MP for Tottenham, on Channel Four. Darcus Howe challenged Bernie Grant about the fact that the latter had made a speech calling on black Britons to “return to Africa” — some black nationalist fantasy of the Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1887-1940). The Devil’s Advocate series, which I had conceived and commissioned when I worked at Channel Four TV, was dedicated to such challenges and confrontations — debates without restraint on affairs, events and controversies in the black and new communities of Britain. Jason Okundaye’s article bemoaned the fact that no such platform or inclination to debate or discuss these issues remained, and that was a glaring hole in the national conversation. Without it, I contend, the distinction between opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide and anti-Semitism is not distinctly asserted and several institutions, including, it seems, Keir Starmer’s Labour government, gets away with confounding one with the other. Bring back Devil’s Advocate? Perhaps! (Though that depended on Darcus’ genius — and no, I’m not looking for a job!)
Source link
