Why Labour Has Lost Me — And Many in My Community

Anyone from my Community growing up politically aware in the 80’s must have seen fully-fledged far-right racism in all its rancid bigotry. They will have seen the Left (and Labour in particular) in the vanguard of the fight against that; against not just anti-Semitism but a whole range of other vile forms of racism. Meanwhile, the border between the extreme right of the Conservative party and the National Front may well have seemed blurred.

Even before we take into account the economic standpoint — the hardship and gut-wrenching poverty suffered by so many in the North and elsewhere whilst a golden yuppie bubble cavorted in London — the sympathies of many in my community would have naturally been with the group standing up against the poisonous hatred being thrown at us.

I grew up in a different time. I was seven years old when Tony Blair swept to power in a landslide which at the time appeared nigh-on apocalyptic. I was 20 when the Labour Party, enfeebled by years of poisonous infighting, finally gave up the ghost of government.

But in that time I saw something very different. For me the hatred came from the left — from supposedly the last place it should have. From Labour.

For me Labour was the party of George Galloway, finally expelled after he actively encouraged British troops to rebel against orders, but the constant purveyor of hatred targeted at the Jewish state (which has naturally had a knock-on effect on Jews here in the UK ) long before that. Labour was the party of Tam Dalyell, the man who infamously ranted about the Prime Minister being controlled by a ‘Zionist cabal’. Labour is the party of Gerald Kaufman, a man whose diatribes against the Jewish community in the UK have grown more and more twisted as the years go by, and who receives nothing more than a slapped wrist from the party he belongs to. Labour was and now is again the Party of Ken Livingstone, a man whose animosity towards Jews is well documented. And Labour is of course, now more than ever very much the party of Jeremy Corbyn, a man who never seems to have met a terrorist group he didn’t like, especially when Israel is concerned.

I went to a University famed for its long-standing Leftist credentials. If there were far-Right groups there, I (thankfully) never saw them. Rather, any hatred that came my way, any anti-Semitism I experienced, was from people espousing left-Wing causes, people for whom ‘Zionist’ was a safe way of saying ‘Jew’ — and whose side, more often than not, seemed to be taken by Leftist activists. If I was walking along on campus and was the target of abuse, people weren’t doing it because of my views on the state of Israel — how could they know my views? They were doing it because I was wearing a skullcap and was therefore obviously identifiable as a Jew.

Coming back to the political angle; I have voted for Labour candidates in local elections, but in 2010, the first general election I was old enough to vote in, I voted Conservative. This was partly because after growing up under Labour throughout my teenage years and seeing the stagnation of that government, particularly under Brown, it seemed to me like a change was needed. I certainly wasn’t alone in thinking that. But it was also because for me Labour were very far from being a party who viewed my community positively.

Moving on to the Miliband years; some Labour Party people I spoke to at the time seemed to think that the Jewish community would go solidly Labour because Ed was Jewish. That was a false assumption for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Ed never appeared to be that comfortable talking about his Jewish roots — they would magically reappear just before the High Holy Days, when he’d write a column for the Jewish Chronicle, but apart from that, they were rarely, if ever, on show. We notice things like that.

Secondly, many people in the community saw Ed’s stance on Israel as ambiguous at best, and hostile at worst. I remember coming out of Golders Green station in late April last year and seeing the (Jewish) Labour PPC, Sarah Sackman, faced by angry questioners for whom Ed’s apparent reluctance to support Israel was a major issue. With an overwhelming percentage of people in my community having close ties to Israel via friends or family, the issue is a profoundly personal one for many of us.

And thirdly and finally, many Jews in the area where I live simply do not want a Jewish Prime Minister for the same reason that many kids don’t want their parents teaching in their own school — if bad things happen, they’ll be the ones to get the blame. We have enough conspiracy theories to deal with without a Jewish Prime Minister — we can vividly imagine the heightened level of bigotry the Jewish community would experience if Britain had a Jewish PM.

Meanwhile, regarding the Conservative party, whilst it can be argued (with a significant degree of accuracy) that its economic policies have changed little from the 80’s, it has undergone a sea change in its attitude to racism. Pretty much the entire far-Right decamped to parties like the BNP and UKIP (and good riddance to them) leaving the Conservatives as a party far more open to people from all backgrounds, faiths and sexual orientations.

David Cameron, despite his many faults, understands the issues that the Jewish community faces and the prejudices they fear and has worked extremely hard to make the Jewish community feel that they have a friend in the Conservative party. His speech late last year, for example, where he stated that if you condemn terrorism in London but not Jerusalem then you are part of the problem, had a big impact amongst people all too used to seeing the prominent members of the Labour Party condemn killings elsewhere but talking about the need for ‘perspective’ when Israel is involved.

For a community which quite frankly lives in constant apprehension of a terrorist attack, having a PM who is strong on defence and clear about the threats this country faces is an absolute must.

Which brings us to Jeremy Corbyn. We know that Jeremy’s position on Israel is incredibly ambiguous — he told a crowd at JW3 that Israel’s legality is undeniable, but simultaneously has dabbled with the genocidally anti-Semitic Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as holocaust deniers and blood libel enthusiasts. His most vocal supporters online seem to overwhelmingly believe in the sort of conspiracy theories where ‘Zionists’ (meaning Jews) or ‘Rothschilds’ (also meaning Jews) control everything and are the cause of all the evil in the world. The gap between the Far-Left and the Far-Right with regards to anti-Semitism has become so small as to be basically nonexistent — there are now a significant number of far-Left activists online approvingly retweeting a variety of loathsome far-right activists.

The Jewish community in this country used to be staunchly Labour, fiercely and loyally so. The fact that Labour is now led by Corbyn and his mob has done nothing to dispel a growing fear within the Jewish community for the last couple of decades: that Labour increasingly views Jews with animosity. We’re not arrogant enough to think that Labour members voted for Corbyn because they don’t like us. We’re just aware that the lingering whiff of highly questionable friends and followers around Corbyn didn’t seem to dissuade many people in the Labour party from voting for him.

Perhaps the saddest part of all this is that the Jewish community I am a part of cares deeply about many of the same things as the Labour Party. Poverty, inequality, injustice — these are issues which resonate deeply with us and which we want to fight — and which we do try to combat. But both I and others cannot and will not do so alongside people who seem to blame ‘Zionists’ (meaning Jews) for it.

I personally think that many of the policies that the Conservatives are trying to push through are at best ridiculous and at worst downright vindictive. Outsourcing the building of nuclear plants to China? The abysmal treatment of junior doctors (and nurses)? Attempting to cut tax credits for the poorest in society? You’d find it hard to find a lot of people in my community who agree with these things.

But we have a choice, between a party which has some ideas we severely disagree with, but which offers us close dialogue regarding our safety and security; and a party which has many social and economic policies which we may agree with, but whose attitude towards us as a community we find deeply troubling.

I have had family in Britain for centuries, I had grandparents and great grandparents who fought for Britain in two World Wars. But I can tell you now that if it looked like Jeremy Corbyn, by some miracle, was going to win the next election, then I would make preparations to leave this country. I believe that Jews living under a Jeremy Corbyn premiership would face levels of unprecedented animosity, as well as being forced to disavow their connection to Israel and the members of their family who live there. Given that I believe this, if Jeremy Corbyn is still at the helm of the Labour party on election day in 2020, I won’t even have the slightest hesitation in putting an ‘x’ in the box of the Conservative party — for me personally and my community generally, I honestly believe it would be the lesser of two evils.