The Big Ride 4 Palestine, an annual charity bike ride which this year raised money for sports facilities for girls in Gaza, was planned to finish its London leg at Bethnal Green on 27 July. However, Labour-controlled Tower Hamlets Council refused to permit it access to the borough. In August it was revealed that the Council did this because it feared hosting the Big Ride could violate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism which the Council adopted in November 2018. This was a Labour council using IHRA for its plainly intended purpose: to provide cover for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people by shutting down Palestine solidarity in Britain in the name of combating anti-Semitism.
This latest example of IHRA censorship, its first known use by local government, reminds us that the organisations of the left should be fighting back hard and fast against Labour’s councils; instead they continue to de-mobilise people, exposing their complete lack of independence from the thoroughly pro-Israel Labour Party. WILL HARNEY reports.
Emails and polite letters
The Big Ride organisers were kept in the dark about the use of IHRA for censoring their charity event. The Council made no mention of anti-Semitism in its correspondence to them. A freedom of information request by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) revealed the real reasons: internal emails show councillors fretting over the Big Ride’s website and other media, which accuse Israel of 67 years of ethnic cleansing and make comparisons to South Africa’s apartheid, accusations which the council feared could be repeated by speakers at the event. Statements that (accurately) describe Israel as a racist, apartheid society built through ongoing ethnic cleansing can easily be censored using IHRA because it suggests that ‘claiming that the existence of a State of Israel a racist endeavour’ is an example of anti-Semitism.
While the PSC’s exposure of the Tower Hamlets decision must be commended, its response to the news has been unacceptably weak and dishonest. In a letter published in The Guardian on 13 August, the PSC’s Professor Kamel Hawwash and 22 other signatories (Socialist Workers Party activists, lawyers, academics, big trade union officials and Labour politicians) warn that Tower Hamlets’ censorship ‘demonstrates the real threat to freedom of expression that [IHRA] represents’. Yet the three-paragraph letter deliberately omits the crucial fact that Tower Hamlets did this because it is a Labour council. It thereby avoids the conclusion that Labour is the threat. The emails laid it bare: councillors would not risk embarrassment over Palestine ‘because of the recent furour [sic] within the Labour party over Anti Semitism [sic]’.
The PSC has no events or campaigns planned to challenge the council publicly. Instead, the PSC and a Big Ride organiser have sent a letter to Mayor John Biggs warning that Tower Hamlets’ decision about the Big Ride was unlawful. They implore Biggs to apologise and to add to the IHRA resolution additional sentences protecting the right to criticise Israel, Zionism and Israeli apartheid. Otherwise the PSC ‘may have no option but to pursue a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman’. No time limit is given.
The ‘additional sentences’ are the same concession the PSC asked for after Tower Hamlets unanimously voted to adopt IHRA in September 2018 (which the PSC blamed on Tory councillors). It was ignored then despite public protests. Yet when IHRA is used for censorship, the PSC sends a letter and plans no protests. This de-escalation is designed to channel anger into a low-profile, respectable channel where it will not cause further embarrassment. What would Labour do without a soft critic like the PSC?
Worse than useless
In fact, the PSC that now says it warned that this would happen is the same PSC that:
- In September 2018 did not oppose IHRA’s adoption by Labour but merely asked for additions to be made to the code of conduct which might protect free speech on Palestine – yet another request that was easily ignored;
- Then immediately adjusted to Labour’s new rules, with PSC President Hugh Lanning advising activists that we no longer ‘need to talk about history’ when defending Palestine;
- And worked to isolate, undermine and boycott the RCG’s spirited and confrontational resistance to Labour’s IHRA treachery in Tower Hamlets and Newcastle. At Tower Hamlets the PSC even asked the Council speaker to read out a cowardly statement publicly dissociating themselves from the RCG.
The picture is clear: the PSC has no intention of fighting back. It betrays other organisations, deflects blame onto the Tories, pleads uselessly for small concessions and works to keep the struggle within limits that are acceptable to Labour. Tower Hamlets Council’s panic over a charity event is proof that those limits are narrower than ever before.
British imperialism, to maintain its partnership with criminal Israel, has tamed Labour and its satellite organisations with ease. A truly independent pro-Palestine movement must be born in imperialist Britain. The RCG has demonstrated in Glasgow, Newcastle, London and elsewhere that it is possible to organise militant local campaigns against IHRA, on an openly anti-Zionist platform, and receive public support. This must be the model for further struggle.
Protest with the RCG at Tower Hamlets Council meeting, 18 September 2019, 7pm
Come to the RCG’s public meeting on IHRA, Palestine and Labour on 1 October, 7pm, SOAS University Room 4429.
