On 28 November, the Hackney branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) held a protest outside of Hackney Town Hall after their deputation about divestment from Israel was ‘postponed’ by the Labour-run council. The organisers had no amplification, so FRFI provided a sound system to ensure the protest could still happen and an FRFI comrade was added to the speakers’ list. When the FRFI speaker was called to speak, she began listing the crimes of the Labour Party, including their historic support of the Zionist state of Israel. Confronting the racist character of the Labour Party was too much for the PSC organisers, including Heather Mendick and Alan Mackie, who attempted to snatch the (FRFI-provided) microphone from the FRFI speaker, physically grabbing her as other PSC supporters hurled misogynistic abuse at her. Such are the lengths the PSC will go to protect the thoroughly Zionist Labour Party.
The PSC’s proposed deputation would have given them the opportunity to demand Hackney Council divest the pension funds investments it is funnelling into businesses complicit in the occupation of Palestine, including companies such as HSBC, Raytheon, and BAE Systems. The Labour-run council refusing to even discuss their investments in companies funding the slaughter of the Palestinian people is in line with the party line: since the 7 October military action by Palestinian resistance forces, the Labour Party has sided again and again with the racist Israeli state. Not a single Labour Party MP has expressed support for the Palestinian resistance. This is the kind of politics the PSC platformed when they invited Labour member Diane Abbott to speak and repeatedly condemn the Palestinians who are resisting their colonisation.
The PSC, in physically attacking the FRFI speaker for calling out the racist Labour Party, acted as a police force, not a solidarity campaign, with their ‘protest’ against Labour councillors exposed as a sham that is designed to channel real anger into a dead end. Despite their aggressive attempts to censor criticism, we were not silenced and carried on speaking. Later Mendick gave a variety of excuses for the PSC’s outburst, from ‘we came for Palestine, we didn’t come for the Labour Party’ to ‘FRFI didn’t organise the event and by speaking at it you were taking credit for it’. None of the excuses hold up. The demonstration was triggered by investment decisions made by the Labour-run council. It was explicitly about a Labour-run council and its support for Zionism. And was Diane Abbott accused of ‘taking over’ the event she didn’t organise when she gave a lengthy speech? Or is it only when communists speak and call out the racist Labour Party that an event is being ‘taken over’?
The PSC’s actions outside Hackney Town Hall is an expression of its need to control the popular outrage at Israel’s genocidal intent against the Palestinian people and channel it into petit-bourgeois respectability politics. They are completely limited by their ties to the Labour Party: just last month, the PSC suspended the leadership of their Manchester branch for stating that they stand with the Palestinian resistance.
The PSC is isolating itself: people are increasingly opposing the Labour Party, as seen by popular protests around east London and other parts of the country targeting the offices of Labour Party MPs. The working class can see the Labour Party for what it is and the censorship tactics of the PSC will not stop that.
