Corbyn purges top Jewish donor over MoS article... and reignites race row
ACCUSATIONS OF ANTI-SEMITISM PROMPT VICIOUS LABOUR REVENGE
JEREMY CORBYN has reignited the race row engulfing Labour by suspending a Jewish party donor who criticised his regime in The Mail On Sunday.
Michael Foster was barred by Mr Corbyn after mounting a powerful attack accusing Mr Corbyn’s leadership cabal of being behind incidents of intimidation.
He likened them to the ‘Sturmabteilung’ – the stormtroopers, known as the SA, or Brownshirts, who helped to cement the Nazis in power in 1930s Germany.
Despite Mr Foster’s status as one of Labour’s top donors – giving nearly £700,000 to the party over the past three years – he has been excluded while he is investigated for ‘abuse’.
As a result, Mr Foster will be banned from the party’s annual conference in Liverpool and prevented from voting in this month’s leadership contest between Mr Corbyn and Owen Smith.
Last night, a furious Mr Foster said he feared the action heralded the start of a full-scale ‘purge’ of Mr Corbyn’s opponents after his expected victory in the contest.
Mr Foster said: ‘The rule of law is being ignored because of intimidation by Corbyn, backed by Momentum, his Praetorian Guard. This will presage the purge of opponents within the Labour Party and then the deselection of any MP who is not signed up to the Left’s ideology.
‘Criticise Corbyn by using the free press and within hours 11,000 people petition the National Executive Committee for your suspension. The coward NEC then takes away your democratic right both to free speech and to vote and you are excluded from the Party. There is no due process.’
He added: ‘Corbyn is not just bad for Labour, he is bad for Britain’s democracy.’
Labour General Secretary Iain McNicol told Mr Foster last week that he was being suspended because of ‘the urgency to protect the party’s reputation’.
He is accused of breaching a party leadership rule that ‘all eligible members and supporters must conduct themselves in a calm and polite manner and be respectful to each other at all times’.
Mr McNicol said in a letter to Mr Foster: ‘It is important that these allegations are investigated and the NEC will be asked to authorise a full report to be drawn up with recommendations for disciplinary action if appropriate.’
Mr Foster wrote his article for this newspaper in response to a series of allegations of violent and antiSemitic incidents blamed on members of Momentum, the pressure group set up to maintain Mr Corbyn’s grip on power.
They have been accused of singling out moderate MPs who are opposed to Mr Corbyn’s leadership for abuse and running social media campaigns garnering support for the deselection of such MPs from Parliament.
Mr Foster is understood to be furious that the party has taken action against him under the very rules which were intended be used against the anti-Semitic abuse.
Moderates fear that if, as expected, Mr Corbyn wins the leadership contest against Mr Smith on September 24, he will crack down even harder against his opponents.
Only three days ago the two leadership contenders clashed angrily over the party’s record on tackling anti-Semitism and abuse within Labour. Mr Smith claimed there was a ‘hard-Left infiltration’ of Labour and that some were ‘bringing in to our party anti-Semitic attitudes’.
But Mr Corbyn responded by branding Mr Smith’s attacks ‘unfair’ and saying: ‘I have spent my life opposing racism in any form.’
In his article on August 14, Mr Foster compared the Corbyn cabal to the Sturmabteilung as part of an argument that they were using Momentum as an intimidatory device in a manner similar to that used by the nascent Nazi regime.
Mr Foster wrote: ‘Once political parties believe they are above the law, it ends with all opposition silenced, whether it is my grandparents in Dachau, or the Left in Erdogan’s Turkey rounded up and held uncharged in prison.’ And in reference to a recent court judgment about the leadership contest, he added that the ‘decision advantaged Corbyn and his Sturmabteilung (stormtroopers)’.
To Mr Corbyn’s fury, an accompanying news story highlighted that the stormtroopers were also know as the Brownshirts.
Mr Foster went on to say in his MoS article: ‘If MPs declare their opposition to Corbyn, bully boy [Len] McCluskey [the Unite union leader] threatens to target them with deselection.
‘Oppose them as a Jewish donor and the riposte from Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s mouthpiece, is that you are part of a Blairite, Right-wing “conspiracy.” ’
In an earlier article for this newspaper, on April 10, he accused Mr Corbyn’s supporters of ‘blending Israel and Zionism into the supposed demagoguery of the classic Jew, an all-controlling malevolent demon, and a rich one, intent on committing incremental genocide against the Palestinian people’.
The articles led to Mr Foster being bombarded with abuse by Momentum activists, with 11,000 people signing a petition calling for his suspension. The anti-abuse rules used against Mr
‘Corbyn is bad for Britain’s democracy’ If MPs declare their opposition to Corbyn, bully boy McCluskey threatens to target them with deselection. Oppose them as a Jewish donor and the riposte from Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s mouthpiece, is that you are part of a Blairite, Right-wing ‘conspiracy’ (the ancient racist rhetoric is that Jews don’t act alone, the malevolent Jew always conspires) to destabilise the democratically elected leader.’ MICHAEL FOSTER, MoS, AuguST 14, 2016
Foster had been instituted in the wake of a review into allegations of racism carried out by Shami Chakrabarti earlier this year.
The report by the former Liberty director, who has since been given a peerage by the Labour leader, was dismissed by critics as a ‘white-
wash’ after it found the Labour Party was ‘not overrun by antiSemitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism’.
The row follows a string of claims that supporters of Mr Corbyn have been behind alleged anti-Semitic attacks on his moderate opponents. Last week, Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish Labour MP who criticised Jeremy Corbyn, said she had been given police protection after receiving 25,000 abusive messages since the end of June.
Counter-terrorism officers are investigating after one abuser accused the Stoke-on-Trent MP of ‘treason’ and said the gallows would be a ‘fine and fitting place’ for her.
She was also called a ‘dyke’ and a ‘CIA agent’ by someone claiming to be a supporter of Mr Corbyn.
Moderates have accused Mr Corbyn of helping to whip up sentiment against Ms Smeeth by holding a Momentum rally in the town as part of what has been dubbed his ‘deselection tour’: Stoke is one area likely to face bitter reselection contests after changes are made to constituency boundaries later in this Parliament, which is expected to trigger brutal battles within the party.
Mr Corbyn’s opponents point to their leader’s own remarks in 2009 when he referred to militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas as ‘friends’ at a meeting in Parliament.
Earlier this year, Ken Livingstone provoked outrage by saying that Hitler was ‘supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews’.
Moderate MPs opposed to Mr Corbyn’s leadership – a majority of the party in the Commons – are divided about whether to serve reluctantly under Mr Corbyn while they resist these calls for their deselection, or to form a splinter group on their own.
The row comes as union barons gather in Brighton this weekend for the start of the TUC conference against the backdrop of the turmoil in Labour. TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady is expected to enter a plea for Labour to stop the in-fighting and ‘start mapping out’ how to win the next Election.
he IS too weak to stand up against the wing of the party on whose support he relies. These people have a Pavlovian reaction to Jews and Israel: see a Jew, see an anti-Palestinian. They blend Israel and Zionism into the supposed demagoguery of the classic Jew, an allcontrolling malevolent demon intent on committing incremental genocide against the Palestinian people.’ MICHAEL FOSTER, MoS, April 10, 2016