Trevor Phillips as ‘Islamophobic’ as Livingstone was ‘anti-Semitic’

In the past two years, the Labour Party has been serially accused of anti-Semitism. It may have been a factor in their loss in the December election. Their leaders have tried to distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli policy.

“Eve, in defiance, bit the apple Oscar bit the peach Let’s celebrate the metaphor And acknowledge what each prefer Intimate, each to each.” From Katy ni Peyti by Bachchoo

Screaming headline in the Munich Daily Bugle circa 1934: “Hitler Suspended From Nazi Party”. The curious, incredulous reader devours the article under the headline. Poor Adolf, it seems, has been suspended from the party for expressing the opinion that the Jewish people should have their homeland in the Middle East, provided by British and French arms and should be encouraged to go there. Interviewed later, Herr Hitler says he merely meant that it was impossible to kill all the Jews in Europe even with concentration camps, so he favoured the setting up of a Jewish state far away.

It’s an incontrovertible historical fact that Hitler had expressed such an opinion in the Nazi interests of ridding Europe of its Jewish population. As you know, gentle reader, he was never suspended or expelled from the Nazi Party, but one Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London and vociferous Labour left-wing activist was suspended from the party for asserting this truth.

The Labour Party’s disciplinary forum, facing a concerted attack from the media and its own members on the issue of anti-Semitism being overlooked or excused in the party, suspended Mr Livingstone. It was no use his pointing out that he could justify the statement. It was construed by his critics as him saying that Hitler was a supporter of Israel.

I have no way of knowing what Mr Livingstone’s intention was. I guess he is a supporter of Palestine and against the Israeli state and its actions in the Middle East, but then so, officially, is the rest of the Labour Party — and most of its Jewish members would not support what Benjamin Netanyahu is doing with settlements and retaliation in murderous force against the population of Gaza.

In the past two years, the Labour Party has been serially accused of anti-Semitism. It may have been a decisive factor in their devastating loss in the December 2019 election. Their leaders have repeatedly tried to distinguish between antiSemitism and anti-Israeli domestic and foreign policy. When severe accusations of anti-Semitism emerged, the party set up an enquiry under one baroness Chakraborty.

Her enquiry came to the conclusion, probably using the same distinction, that there was no intrinsic, systematic antiSemitism in the party, though individual bigotry and racism would be investigated and dealt with. This conclusion didn’t satisfy the Jewish media and several Jewish Labour MPs and officials came out in vociferous denunciation of the enquiry, calling it a whitewash.

And now, after the spectacular loss in the last election, the Labour Party has suspended my friend and long-time associate Trevor Phillips from membership. He can’t attend party meetings or stand for office. The party accuses him of “Islamophobia”, while not identifying his accusers.

Gentle reader, my opening nonsense about Hitler being suspended from the Nazi Party was prompted by Trevor’s suspension. Trevor has been for most of his student and working life a celebrated and official advocate of anti-racism. We worked together when he was a producer of programmes at London Weekend Television. He went on to be chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and when his term ended there, he was chair of the Runnymede Trust which sponsored opposition to all forms of racism.

The Labour Party’s action, signed off by party secretary, Jennie Formby, should lead to an investigation and possible expulsion from Labour. Trevor has been suspended on three counts of what the complainants label as Islamophobia.

The first accusation is that Trevor publicly stated his opposition to a convicted group of child-abusers who groomed and raped vulnerable girls, drugged them and passed them round the group and prostituted them. This gang in Rotherham were from Pakistani Mirpur. Other groups, guilty of the same offence, have over the last few years been convicted in five cities for precisely these criminal offences — and they too happen to be in the main Muslim men from Mirpur. Trevor identified them as such.

It’s not clear whether the Labour Party would have acted against Trevor if he had not identified these gangs as “Muslim”.

I don’t for a moment believe that Trevor was implying that the criminality had anything to do with Islam. Neither did he intend to say that Muslims were prone to such crime. The problem in Britain is that there is a, possibly warranted, sensibility about identifying criminals as a group, religious or racial. This is sensible, but there is undoubtedly a case for identifying certain types of behaviour, assumptions and attitudes with particular regional cultures and that’s what Trevor intended.

He has also been accused of noticing that at a Muslim function he attended as a guest, only one out of a hundred of those present was wearing a poppy on Remembrance Day, which he opined was a sign of not integrating into British national sentiment. A fair enough observation?

Thirdly, he was castigated for a remark he made about some Muslims not condemning the murder of the writers and illustrators of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in France. Trevor implied that this could mean that they sympathised with the terrorist murderers.

Calling any of these observations Islamophobia is ridiculous.

Perhaps Ms Formby’s decision took into consideration that Trevor condemned the Labour Party for inaction over anti-Semitism in its ranks and said he felt disinclined to vote for the party until satisfactory action was taken.

One political consideration which almost certainly affected his suspension was the fact that the Labour Party today has about a dozen MPs from predominantly Muslim communities, the majority of whose electorate are either Mirpuri or Bangladeshi. It is no secret that in these communities there is a decided and openly expressed anti-Israeli sentiment. And that this sentiment often and easily elides into general and even vicious anti-Semitism. Opposition to it is difficult for the party.