Labour’s multicultural crisis!
Posted by admin978 on November 10, 2023 · Leave a Comment
Though it still seems very likely that Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer will become Prime Minister in about a year’s time, the latest crisis in Palestine has raised problems that are rooted in Labour’s historical commitments to both Zionism and the UK’s multiracial society.
For most of its history, the Labour Party has been pro-Zionist – with the partial exceptions of the Attlee government that presided over a war against Jewish terrorists from 1945-48, and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party during 2015-20.
Successive Labour leaders (ever since Attlee’s government saw the first large-scale West Indian immigration) have become ever more committed to the vision of multiracialism and multiculturalism.
Until the 1980s it never occurred to any politician that Islam and in particular solidarity with fellow Muslims in Palestine would become a factor in British politics. Even racial nationalists during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s emphasised other reasons why non-European races and cultures didn’t belong here. Religion was rarely taken seriously as a political division (apart from Protestant v Catholic divisions in Ulster and some British cities).
But now significant numbers of Muslim councillors and MPs (as well as some pro-Palestinian, non-Muslim Labourites, usually either from the Corbynite left-wing or worried about Muslim voters in their areas) are rebelling against their leader’s support for Israel.
Starmer seems determined to distance himself from Corbyn and take Labour back to the Tony Blair era (or even the era of Harold Wilson, who from 1963-76 was the most pro-Zionist Labour leader in the party’s history).
Yet the brutality of Israel’s assault on Gaza has shocked some Muslim councillors so much that they have quit the party.
Much of the trouble has come in areas of Lancashire that are well-known to the H&D team from the 2000s when racial nationalism flourished in some racial flashpoint areas.
The leader of Burnley council has quit Labour together with ten colleagues, instantly removing Labour’s control of the council. For now they are in an independent group, and the council’s future direction is uncertain.
Councillors have also quit Labour In nearby Pendle, while in Blackburn (where H&D editor Mark Cotterill was once a councillor) there have been defections from both the Tories and Labour.
Yesterday three members of Haringey council in North London (this time non-Muslim Corbynists) joined the exodus.
For now it seems obvious that Starmer will stick with his pro-Zionist policy whatever happens. But if Israeli policy becomes even more brutal, he will start to come under pressure from more mainstream voices in his party, and the split will widen.
The tragedy in all this of course is that while Muslim councillors are prepared to speak for their brothers and sisters in Gaza, there is no racial nationalist party of any size able to speak for indigenous Britons.
