On Saturday 14 March, the Zionism Is Racism Defence Campaign (ZIRDC) held a public meeting entitled ‘Fighting the Criminalisation of Palestine Solidarity.’ The Defence Campaign was set up in response to the 8 February arrest of a black anti-Zionist singled out at a picket organised by the Revolutionary Communist Group in Nottingham (https://tinyurl.com/uvmc6zn), and was recently able to announce a victory when Nottinghamshire Police dropped their investigation (https://tinyurl.com/uoxmuum). Nottingham RCG has been central to the campaign from the start.
The meeting was addressed by Tony Greenstein, anti-Zionist activist and founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign; Charlotte Kates, international co-ordinator for Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network; and the RCG supporter around whose arrest the ZIRDC campaign has been built. For a report of Greenstein and Kates’s comments, see the campaign’s blog: https://tinyurl.com/rzmx86d
The campaign speaker stressed the importance of defending those attacked by the state by building active political campaigns, and was clear about the political lessons to be drawn by anti-racists and socialists from the last few years:
Corbynism’s capitulation [in the face of the Zionist smear campaign] threw the door wide open for the criminalisation of Palestine solidarity. And crucially, it is not just the Labour Party itself which is proving unwilling to combat Zionism. This is also true of those organisations – formally separate from the Labour Party – who insist on tying their politics to the Labour Party and to what is acceptable to the Labour Party. In Glasgow, Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), have proudly allowed Zionist organisation the Confederation of Friends of Israel – Scotland (COFIS) to march as part of their anti-racism march for the last four years. It is of course sheer lunacy to let a virulently racist organisation, which explicitly supports the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, take part in anti-racist march. But SUTR could see the writing on the wall – SUTR is principally an alliance between the Socialist Workers Party and the Labour left; and in the context of Labour’s total capitulation to Zionist attacks any challenge to COFIS would have endangered the organisation’s links with the Labour left. The SWP formally contends that Zionism is a racist standpoint; and SUTR is not a Labour Party organisation. This ongoing debacle in Glasgow shows what happens when socialists and anti-racists limit their political standpoint to what is acceptable to the Labour Party. It is therefore abundantly clear that any movement in solidarity with Palestine must break with Labour.
That movement in solidarity with Palestine must be built on the streets. That is why it is important that those in Nottingham and beyond who stand with the Palestinians attend the ZIRDC’s upcoming demonstration as part of Samidoun’s international week of action (https://tinyurl.com/tcv86v9): Speak Out For Palestine | Saturday 28 March | Meet at 11am outside HSBC, Clumber Street NG1 3GA. Facebook event here: https://tinyurl.com/vjatv6w
Zionism Is Racism!
Victory to the Intifada!
