Benn’s granddaughter faces Corbynite abuse
Tony Benn’s granddaughter was attacked by Jeremy Corbyn supporters after she called on the Labour leader to resign and accused him of turning the party into an “institutionally antisemitic” organisation. Emily Benn, 28, a former Labour councillor, suggested the row engulfing the party “will not change while he is leader”. She attracted a torrent of abuse online, with some internet users saying her grandfather, a long-time ally of Mr Corbyn, would be turning in his grave.
TONY BENN’S granddaughter was attacked by Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters last night after she called on the Labour leader to resign.
Emily Benn, 28, whose grandfather was one of Mr Corbyn’s closest allies for several decades, accused him of turning Labour into an “institutionally anti-semitic” party.
The former Labour councillor for Croydon also denounced an article written by Mr Corbyn on Labour’s antisemitism row as “utter rubbish”.
Ms Benn added that the Labour leader made her “sick to my stomach”.
Her views were met with a torrent of abuse online.
Ray Ellis, a national officer at the Communication Workers Union, wrote online that the “rate of rotation” in Mr Benn’s grave “could probably power a medium-sized town”.
George Galloway, the former Labour and Respect MP, suggested she may be suffering from a “mental health issue”.
Another commentator claimed: “The great Tony Benn would have been ashamed to call this disgusting, lying, little Tory mouthpiece girl his granddaughter.”
Last night, moderate Labour MPS waded into the row in Ms Benn’s defence.
Jess Phillips, the chairman of the party’s women and equalities committee, said Mr Benn would be “horrified at how vile politics has become”.
“My grandad was a friend of Tony Benn, and a Bennite through and through. He would have had a stand-up fight with those abusing his granddaughter.” Ayesha Hazarika, a former aide to Ed Miliband, said: “It’s disgusting, weird & creepy to abuse a young woman about her deceased grandfather.”
Citing a slogan of Mr Corbyn, she added: “Kinder, gentler politics – do me a favour… never has a phrase morphed into something so ugly.”
The abuse of Ms Benn is likely to embarrass Mr Corbyn, who last night published a video apology to the Jewish community, disavowing supporters who “use anti-semitic poison”.
It was published 48 hours after an article written by the Labour leader on Friday – when most observant Jews begin the Sabbath – was condemned by the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council as “ill timed and ill conceived”.
Meanwhile, Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, appeared to undermine Mr Corbyn yesterday as he called for the party to adopt the full IHRA definition of anti-semitism, recently rejected by the national executive committee, or face a “vortex of eternal shame and embarrassment”.
Separately, Mr Corbyn came under pressure as a long-serving Jewish MP demanded that he explain claims that he and members of his staff nicknamed her “the member for Tel Aviv”.
Louise Ellman told The Daily Telegraph she had been left “profoundly upset” and expected Mr Corbyn to discuss the claims with her in private.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn branded the claims by an anonymous former aide a “fabrication”.
‘Labour is no threat to Jewish life – Corbyn”, said the headline in Saturday’s Guardian, in which the Labour leader denied anti-semitism allegations. It has come to something when such a headline is thought to be reassuring. The words are chilling. They remind me of a manifesto promise of the National Front: “Patriotic Jews have nothing to fear.”
Why should Jews be expected to breathe a grateful sigh of relief? They need to be given good cause to believe that Labour wholly accepts them, welcomes Jewish members and actively protects Jews from physical, verbal and doctrinal attacks.
Mr Corbyn offers such assurances, but you can tell a man by the company he keeps over 40 years. The latest revelation is his association with the Just World Trust, an NGO which defended the notorious French Holocaust denier, Roger Garaudy, in the Nineties. (Mr Corbyn’s spokesman denies he is on any of the trust’s panels.)
After Labour did so well in the last general election, it became fashionable to say that revealing Mr Corbyn’s extremist past was useless. The young did not know what the IRA was, and didn’t care about Hamas or Hezbollah.
It is true that these attacks did not work, but this is surely because voters wished to give Mr Corbyn a chance. Theresa May arrogantly assumed she would thrash him, and therefore did not bother to persuade the public of her own policies. When Mr Corbyn, with his soft voice and herbivorous manner, appeared, he disarmed criticism. Many voted for him precisely because they didn’t think he would win – a pain-free protest against a rotten Conservative campaign.
This time, it is different. He has a serious chance of being prime minister, so he must tell us what he really believes and who his friends are.
It would be good idea to draw up a full record of the platforms which Mr Corbyn has shared from the Seventies on – with people who advocate the violent ejection of the British state from Northern Ireland, the defeat of Western forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the refusal of Muslims to serve in our Armed Forces, the obliteration of Israel, the non-existence of the Holocaust, and so on.
Sometimes, even his timing has been telling. It was shortly after the Brighton Bomb in 1984, which nearly killed half the Cabinet, that Mr Corbyn brought the then IRA leader Gerry Adams to Parliament. It was on Holocaust Memorial Day itself that he appeared on a platform which linked Auschwitz and Gaza. He has, as the police used to say, a record as long as your arm. Let’s see it.
In the old days, very few could get in to university and when they did, the state paid for them, so the advantages for that few seemed obvious. Nowadays, all universities, however useless, cost £9,250 a year, and half the age cohort attends them. Given the cost, it is amazing, not that their applications are now falling, but that they are still so high. Why, exactly, are they worth attending?
Except for a few professional qualifications – law, medicine – which require a lot of learning, I doubt whether people should go to university primarily to get a job. Work skills are best acquired by work itself. We live in an age of bogus over-qualification and too little real training.
On the whole, you won’t enjoy university if you do not want to expand your mind by study. If you are longing to get on with real life, don’t be bullied into going. I loved university, but I have always noticed that some of the people I most respect did not attend one. They often possess an independence of thought and strength of character which seems to drain out of those of us who were educated out of our wits.
When I was a schoolboy, I became a proto-bore for real ale. The young Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) was fighting for real, live beer against the dead, keg variety. It was an exciting battle against seemingly overwhelming odds – lazy publicans who thought the traditional pumps were “dirty” and big brewers who found it convenient to produce beer which needed no care and attention. Yet the right side won. The brewers were forced to listen to the thinking, drinking public.
Real ale’s recovery has continued ever since. Today, once-famous enemy names like Watneys Red Barrel and Ind Coope Double Diamond are gone with the wind which they so often induced.
The same battle must now be fought over cider. Yesterday’s Sunday
Telegraph quotes a cider producer: “The industry is moving further and further away from the use of apple as the principal ingredient in cider.” That is such a tale of our times, rather like the way people can nowadays study classics without the principal ingredients of Latin and Greek.
Sickly-sweet fruit ciders apparently now make up 27 per cent of the cider market. Herefordshire orchards are threatened because of non-cider cider. The Campaign for Real Cider already exists within Camra. It should be on a war footing. The best English cider is flat, cloudy and dry. Try to get up after a pint of it, and you should find that your legs have been removed without the pain of surgical amputation.
We won over kegless beer: we can win again over legless cider.
‘It would be good idea to draw up a record of the platforms which Mr Corbyn has shared from the Seventies on’