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The Magic Money Tree
Sep 23
The October delegate meeting will hear Paul Kelemen discussing Where does the Labour party adopting the IHRA definition on antisemitism leave the politics of anti-racism?
What has unfurled this vehement denunciation of the left for antisemitism? Only late last year, the largest survey on attitudes in Britain to Jews and Israel published by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (IJPR) concluded that a ‘relatively small group of the general population can justifiably be described as antisemitic’ and that ‘the very left-wing are, on the whole, no more antisemitic than the general population, but neither are they less antisemitic’. A still more recent YouGov survey showed that since Jeremy Corbyn has been the Labour party leader, antisemitism has declined among Labour voters.
Among Conservative voters, the decline over the same period to this question was much smaller and the overall levels of prejudice much higher: 31 percent in 2015, and 27 percent in 2017. Opinion polls give, at best, a rough assessment and opinions are fluid but the decline of antisemitism among Labour voters probably results from younger people, more at ease with multiculturalism, indentifying, in greater numbers, with Labour since Corbyn has become leader. Whatever the reason, it belies the ideological assault to drum into public consciousness that the party and its supporters released from the grip of New Labour’s rightwing agenda are descending into antisemitic bigotry
The frenzied campaign that purports to have detected a tidal wave of leftwing antisemitism has another objective. It is aimed at closing down debate on Israel’s continuing settlement expansion and military occupation aimed at preventing Palestinian self-determination by fragmenting the Palestinian population into ghettos, fenced off behind walls, barriers and army checkpoints and deprived of adequate land, water, housing, medical services and opportunities for work.
On 18th July of this year, in the midst of the media frenzy over Labour’s alleged anti-semitism, the New York Times reported that after over five decades of illegal occupation of the West Bank, ‘Israel has marked out hundreds of thousands of acres as public land, and it has allocated almost half of them for use. But only 400 of those acres 0.24% of the total allocated so far – have been earmarked for Palestinians… the other 99.76% of the land went to help Israeli settlements.’ The process of dispossession that is taking place in the West Bank replicates what occurred in the land area that now constitutes the state of Israel. On the eve of the 1948 war that led to the foundation of Israel, 93% of the land was in Palestinian ownership. Currently, Palestinians living in Israel, forming 20% of the population,
own just 3%. In addition, Israel has seized from the Palestinians: 10,000 shops, 25,000 family houses, 95% of olive groves and 50% of citrus groves.
The allocation of Palestinians resources to an incoming Jewish population, whether in Israel or in the West Bank, follows from the principle of building a ‘Jewish state’, the essence of which is to prioritise the needs of its Jewish population over those of the Palestinian inhabitants. The discrimination between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank is still more blatant. Since 1967, this has been a new frontier of colonisation where the two populations are governed by different laws and where the Israeli state promotes settlement expansion for its Jewish citizens while concentrating the Palestinians into ever smaller enclaves. The Israeli geographer, Oren Yiftachel, writing in 2006, pointed out that the Israeli state has built, since 1948, over 700 housing development areas for its Jewish population but not a single one for Palestinians under its rule. Israel, he argues, is an ‘ethnocracy’. Unlike the South African apartheid system, Israel does not operate the petty forms of separation in public spaces such as on buses, in restaurants and entertainment venues but it discriminates on grounds of ethnicity in the state’s allocation of resources, be that in land, state jobs, housing or regional development. In every sphere Palestinians are marginalised and have second class status.
Given these realities, why should left-wing criticism of the Israeli state elicit such controversy? In part this is the product of the Labour party’s historic support for the Zionist movement. This dates back to the 1920s, when the Zionist movement along other forms of European expansion into the unindustrialised world, was seen as a ‘civilising’ force and one that for many socialists seemed to have the added advantage of introducing trade unionism and co-operative agriculture. Few in the Labour party, in this period, objected to these labour organisations excluding Arabs in order to develop a separate Jewish economy. For the Zionist movement, nationalism trumped socialism. Its project was not to have Jews live alongside Arabs but to remove the indigenous people as European colonisation had earlier, for example in north America and Australia.
The Labour party’s historic support for the Zionist project was given added force by the Holocaust. Israel’s establishment was widely seen as Western civilisation’s atonement for the Nazi mass murder of Jews, though it was at the expense of the Palestinians who had paid no part in the genocide. But if Israel is meant to symbolise atonement for the worst crime of modern racism it can be rightly expected to represent the negation of racism. Instead, the Israeli state is based on ethno-nationalism, also propounded by the governing elites of Hungary and Poland, which define national belonging as rooted in ‘blood’ relations,
from which then derive political and economic privileges denied to those deemed to be of a different origin.
Ethno-nationalism is the main ideological seedbed of contemporary racism in all its forms and, yet, the bizarre consequence of adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism is to make more difficult calling for the Israeli state to be transformed into a multi-ethnic state, with equality for all its citizens. Without that, however, there is no prospect of realising lasting peace in the Middle East.
Paul Kelemen is the author of The British Left and Zionism,History of a Divorce (Manchester University Press, 2012)
BTUC has received a following request of support from the Branch Secretary of the city’s UNISON branch representing the Birmingham’s Home Care workers.
You can send messages of support or donations to the hardship fund by contacting info@birmighanunison.co.uk or write to the branch office at UNISON, 19th Floor, McLaren Building, 46 The Priory Queensway., Birmingham B4 7LR.
You can also show your support by attending the lobby of Birmingham City Council Cabinet meeting on Tuesday the 31st of July https://www.facebook.com/events/1229002903908559/
I am writing to update you on the dispute being fought by our home care enablement assistants. Last year Birmingham City Council put forward a proposal to cut the enablement service by 40% and to bring in a 3 shift in one-day rota.
Our members in home care passionately believe in the work that they do. The service they provide is a vital one as they are out in the community often the first person someone will see when they are bought home after a hospital visit. So when the council said they had to cut the budget unison members voted to strike as they know the service is needed and they knew the shift pattern would make them too tied to do their job properly.
The staff wanted to try to draw up their own rota to cover the shifts and management agreed to this if we called off action as they were worried about strikes in the run up to the local elections. They also knew that we had to re-ballot after 6 months. So they offered to let the staff draw up rotas, we called off 5 days of strike action then as soon as the election was over they stopped the staff self-roster pilot. We re-balloted and again the members voted in a 57.5% turn out by 97.3% to strike.
Management have now issued a new business case to make all the staff, 60% of whom are full time or work over 30 hours redundant or offer them a contract 22.75, 21 or 14 hours. Management say that they want the 286 staff to fit into the new service where there will be 90 contracts of 22.75 hrs, 82 contract on 21 hrs and 54 contracts of 14 hrs. Staff will be expected to fit into 3 working patterns or leave. They will be asked to work 7 days out of 14 working opposite days each week. 14 hours’ contracts will be 7-11am. 21 hr contracts 4-10pm and 22.75 hr contracts of 7-11 and 12-2.30. This will make it almost impossible to get a second job. Management have made de it clear anyone not fitting these patterns will be made redundant. This will impact on those with caring responsibilities or with a second job already. The hours being offered do not fit with claiming universal credit or working tax credits accessed currently by staff.
These rotas are designed to make staff leave.
At the same time management have engaged an external consultant to look at the merger of the Birmingham and Solihull STP footprint and social care and health services for older adults. They have agreed to spend £12 of this work. The company are called Newton Europe and they are charging very high consultancy rates to councils all over the place on how to make cuts. It’s clear that they want to merge the services with staff on the lowest terms and conditions they can get away with.
Our home caters are not prepared to see their lives ruined, service user’s services cut by another £3m while the council pay £1,400 a day to a man in a suit without a fight. Our 282 home care members are heartbroken by this proposal but they are also organised and angry.
Members have voted to take 14 days’ strike action over the next 6 weeks and they would really appreciate your support. We cannot allow low paid women workers to be treated in this way.
Please send messages of support or donations to the hardship fund by contacting info@birmighanunison.co.uk or write to the branch office at UNISON, 19th Floor, McLaren Building, 46 The Priory Queensway., Birmingham B4 7LR.
Best wishes
Caroline Johnson, Branch Secretary, Unison Birmingham Branch
Birmingham’s affordable housing shortage – how developers exploit loopholes to put profit first
The Council promised that 35% of new developments would be affordable housing, but achieved less than 10%. Of the 4,768 houses approved for development in 2016/17, just 425 were lower cost housing, according to figures obtained in a Freedom of Information request by BirminghamLive.
The Birmingham Post online July 2 reports that house builders are exploiting loopholes in planning regulations to avoid providing affordable housing in the city. They are allowed to sidestep rules on affordable housing if they can show that providing discounted homes would stop the development making a profit.
Last year, the housing charity Shelter revealed that during 2015/16, Birmingham developers behind the construction of 2,916 homes were able to backtrack on promises to deliver 1,003 of them at the affordable rate by arguing their profits would be unfairly hit.
The problem also impacts on people trying to get social housing. In the West Midlands, there are 97,526 households on the social housing waiting list, according to figures from 2017, but there are just 37,840 available lettings. In Birmingham alone – a deficit of 3,135 social rent lettings.
By far the biggest developer of housing in the city is the council itself, under its Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust arm. But even it has to sell about 50% of the 1,000 plus homes a year it is building to fund further building.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, says the social housing waiting list “a national scandal” that is happening right across the country including in Birmingham and the West Midlands.
“People are being condemned to a life of unstable and expensive renting, forcing them out of areas they can no longer afford to live in,” she says. “But if we want to build enough genuinely affordable housing, we need to be prepared to pay for it.
“This means bringing down the mammoth cost of land. And getting rid of planning loopholes that make it too easy for developers to wriggle out of building affordable homes.”
So what can be done to solve the problem? Birmingham Labour councillor Peter Griffiths, who was until May the city’s cabinet member for housing, argues that the council should be more forensic in its analysis of developers’ figures.
He also suggests linking affordable housing contributions directly to the profitability of building projects.
Griffiths, who is now on his second spell on the city’s planning committee, is sceptical about the viability assessments that developers have to do to prove that they could not afford to build if forced to discount homes, and wants to get more of them independently audited.
In some cases he has found figures to be questionable. Affordable housing is supposed to be below 80% of market value, yet he says that some developers make assumptions of 60% just to tip the development into a loss on paper and excuse themselves the discount.
The Birmingham Post report quotes one would-be home-buyer priced out of the market. Jess Taylor says the solution should be simple. Birmingham Council – and the government – should choose to prioritise building affordable homes to fix the problem. “I think all new homes should fall under affordable brackets. Thirty-five per cent isn’t enough.”
Come and hear Councillor Sharon Thompson, the new Cabinet member for Housing, speaking on the issue at the Birmingham Trades Council meeting on Thursday 5 July at 7.30 in the Council House
You can read the full report by Neil Elkes, Nicola Slawson and Sarah Probert in the Birmingham Post at
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