More heat than light in this thread thusfar, I think. I suppose I should comment because, as is well known, this is the issue that I cancelled my not short membership and even longer affiliation with the Labour Party over.
What is an institution? It is made up of the individuals within it, of its rules and practices, of its collective actions and its collective memories. If it is an institution with some form of membership structure, then it is quite possible for the institution to have characteristics at a corporate level that are not shared at an individual level by a majority of members. It is actually very common. I don't think it is really possible to discuss
this issue without that point being acknowledged.
Anyway, I was asked about some of this a little while ago and most of what I wrote in response seems relevant, so instead of just repeating myself, I will quote the relevant parts:
You recently cancelled your membership in the Labour Party over the pervasiveness of antisemitism within certain elements of the Party, and over the inaction of Party leadership to address the problem.
That was one reason, yes. Though about the institution as much as the leadership specifically (even if the two are linked), and it's possible that I'd have come to a different decision if I lived somewhere with a less... um... problematic CLP.
What do you believe are some structural reforms that could help uproot antisemitism? Which groups or people do you believe to bear the most responsibility for this crisis?
1. The big problem institutionally is that there is no independent complaints and disciplinary procedure, and that there isn't even a functional one that happens to be partial. It's a complete disaster. I think one of the most telling episodes in this affair actually concerned a complaint of about a different kind of racism, and that's why it's so telling. Anas Sarwar (who, for the record, I distrust and dislike) made a complaint relating to a racist remark made by a Hamilton councillor1 who just happens to be one of the most powerful people in the trade union/local government nexus in his part of Scotland. Sarwar is affiliated with the Wrong Side from an institutional perspective, while the man he complained about (as noted) happens to be part of the furniture. Various procedural absurdities were pulled, and the councillor was officially cleared. You may just possibly see the problem here. There are other things that need to be done, but this is the most important thing.
2. This is actually quite complicated. Firstly there's the part that is all about factionalist madness; the way the 'need' to protect Corbyn from his patchy record and undeniable blind spots has lead pretty directly to bad practice, worse precedents and general paranoia over the matter. Bad enough, but it doesn't (can't) explain the scale of the problem.
Essentially there are three... no... four elements to this. The first is the dangerous self-congratualistic habit that has, for quite some time now, led a lot of people in Labour to believe that because Labour Is An Anti-Racist Party that Good Comrades Cannot Be Racists. So blind eyes are turned and excuses are made and that's just the way things are; look at how many people continued to insist that Livingstone could not possibly have really meant the things he said until he made it all so very extremely explicit. The second is the lamentable tendency (going back at least forty years) for ~ The Conflict ~2 to be used as a factional proxy in the toxic world of student and Young Labour politics. The third is not about the Labour Party, but about what we might call... I don't know... wider Left Culture (often people who are more liberal than anything and not all that left wing, but who read e.g. The Guardian), along with the Hard/Far Left specifically. The latter has had issues with antisemitism for a very long time, and this became endemic and even characteristic after the (almost entirely Jewish) right-wing of the CPGB crossed over into Kinnockism in the 1980s and never returned. A growing obsession with ~ The Conflict ~ and a tendency to see it as symbolic of all that is bad about the world (oh dear) in the former set of circles often turns rather cluelessly toxic. The key thing here is that the latter are very influential in certain trade unions and now in the Party hierarchy as well, while the former are much more likely to have membership cards than previously. The fourth is that, bluntly, antisemitism runs very deep within British society and culture. This is relevant to the previous three things, but also relates to something else: a lot of angry middle aged and elderly people who were not previously politically active or often even particularly political have been inspired by the (cheap, yes, but not unskilled) populist rhetoric and simple narratives provided by Corbyn and the rest of the Labour Left at present. That in itself is not a problem. Where it has become an issue is that there has been no 'political education' to accompany this, no warding off of the ghastly old spectre of the 'Socialism of Fools', which is a bit of an issue in a country which antisemitic sentiment is as deeply rooted as this. Where it then gets extremely messy is that often these factors combine.
1. There's actually an Atlas link to this: back when afleitch was a Conservative, he was an unsuccessful candidate against this guy in a local election.
2. Credit to Nathan for that term.
Some additional comments are worth making. The first is that Labour, as an institution, also happens to deal appallingly with claims of sexual harassment and has, in general, an internal culture that a lot of people would find to be... um... aggressively masculine. As with the Sarwar case, this different problem highlights something of the true nature of this issue.
The second is that while it is not rational to belief that a Corbyn government (especially one without a Corbynite parliamentary majority: not possible, by the way, even if Labour were to win a majority, somehow, in the present election) would present as a material threat to the Jewish community, it is not actually reasonable to demand cold rationality from the Jewish community on the subject of its safety, given that the Holocaust remains, just about, within living memory and most of them lost family members to it. This does deeply complicate exactly how people on the Left can respond, and I understand that it makes things difficult. Nevertheless...
A third and,
mercifully you may well say, final point now: an additional issue is that for a brief but significant period in the 1950s and 60s (a very important time in the history of the Jewish community in Britain for obvious reasons), the Labour Party was one of the main bulwarks against antisemitism in British society. There was no easier way to get on the wrong side of Gaitskell or Wilson than to be caught making an antisemitic remark: some otherwise promising MPs had their careers derailed for doing so. This was a long time ago now, but history is history and it has added a real sense of betrayal to what has happened: e.g. that the institution that Grandfather voted for is now
like this being widely seen as adding a grotesquely personal insult to what would be felt as an injury no matter.
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