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BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online Gidley, Ben and McGeever, Brendan Francis and Feldman, David (2020) Labour and Antisemitism: a crisis misunderstood. The Political Quarterly 91 (2), pp. 413-421. ISSN 0032-3179. Downloaded from: Usage Guidelines: Please refer to usage guidelines at or alternatively contact lib-eprints@bbk.ac.uk.
The Political Quarterly Labour and Antisemitism: a Crisis Misunderstood BEN GIDLEY, BRENDAN MCGEEVER AND DAVID FELDMAN Abstract In this article, we argue that Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been misunderstood. We sug- gest that a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism offers a way for- ward. There are three elements to this claim. First, by drawing on existing data on attitudes towards Jews, we criticise the widespread focus on individual ‘antisemites’, rather than on the broader problem of antisemitism. In turn, we conceive of antisemitism not as a virus or poison, as in so many formulations, but rather, as a reservoir of readily available images and ideas that subsist in our political culture. Second, following on from this understanding, we offer five ways forward. Finally, we set this analysis in the context of a historical parting of the ways between anti-racism and opposition to antisemitism. An anti-racism defined solely by conceptions of whiteness and power, we argue, has proven unable to fully acknowledge and account for anti-Jewish racism. Keywords: Labour, antisemitism, anti-racism, metaphor, Jewish community, the left SINCE APRIL 2016, a long-running controversy predecessor, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, by Justin about antisemitism in the Labour Party and Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as on the left more broadly has become a criti- well by a wide range of Labour figures from cal and, at times, central feature of political Lord Mandelson to Len McCluskey. Words debate in Britain. This debate is not matter and, as we shall see, these metaphors restricted to conventional political actors, but lead those who employ them to misconceive extends to academics, journalists, and blog- both the problem Labour faces and the sort gers. For some, an antisemitic way of think- of action the party needs to take. ing about Jews, Zionism and Israel, once The idea that Labour’s antisemitism crisis located on the margins of the Labour Party, is, essentially, a malign confection, broadcast won positions of power and influence fol- by the opponents and enemies of Cor- lowing the election of Jeremy Corbyn as lea- bynism, was just about the majority opinion der in 2015.1 For others, by contrast, the in the party in the autumn of the 2019 elec- charges of antisemitism levelled against tion. A September YouGov survey of mem- Labour should be viewed as a ‘moral panic’ bers found that 66 per cent did not think the or as a smear, designed to discredit support party had a serious problem of antisemitism for socialism at home and for Palestinians in within its membership and that 54 per cent the Middle East.2 blamed the accusations on political oppo- There is one significant, but unnoticed, nents who wanted to undermine Jeremy point of consensus in this otherwise bitter Corbyn or on the ‘mainstream media’.3 dispute. Figures on all sides conceive antise- These abbreviated views expressed by mitism as an exogenous force which contam- Labour members chime well with the more inates and spoils the political body it developed argument provided by the party’s inhabits. Both Jeremy Corbyn and the Chief leaders and advocates. This argument, deliv- Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis characterise antisemit- ered in different registers, ranging from bel- ism as ‘a poison’. For the Prime Minister ligerent to regretful, has three main Boris Johnson, and for Michael Gove, it is a elements. First, it acknowledges that, disap- ‘virus’, a term also used by Mirvis’s pointingly, there is some antisemitism in © 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC) 1 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Labour but that it is a tiny problem. In July Third, the idea that antisemitism is an alien
2019, for example, Jennie Formby, the party’s growth, without any sources in the ecology
General Secretary, pointed out that since and history of the left, forgets the antisemit-
September 2015 antisemitism related cases ism that recurs through the history of British
that had gone through all stages of the radicalism from the Chartists, to the Boer
Labour Party’s disciplinary procedures War, to the present day, and which repre-
amounted to 0.06 per cent of the party’s sents Jews as disloyal, and finance capital as
average membership over that period. This Jewish. The proposition that antisemitic
figure, or a similar one, is frequently held up ideas remain alive within left political cul-
as an indication of how insignificant the ture is reinforced by new research. In 2019,
party’s problem is.4 Second, the argument the anti-racist advocacy group Hope not
highlights the Labour left’s record of oppos- Hate identified 27,000 UK based left-wing
ing racism and fascism: this exemplary past Twitter accounts that either directly spread
means accusations of antisemitism in Labour antisemitic ideas or deny and trivi-
can only be falsehoods disseminated to dis- alise them.5 When assessing this evidence, it
credit the party by Tories, Blairites and Zion- is sometimes hard to distinguish between
ists, factions which fear its radicalism in Labour Party members, supporters and the
general and its support for the Palestinians wider penumbra of left opinion, but what is
in particular. Finally, according to this script, clear is the existence within the left of politi-
insofar as there is a problem in Labour, it is cal beliefs which draw on antisemitic ideas.
conceived as one that reflects society at large All of this suggests there is good reason
and does not reflect aspects of the history for us to review evidence of the extent of
and culture of the left. antisemitism in Labour and to place it in the
Each of these elements should provoke context of what we know about the extent of
scepticism. First, the assumption that the antisemitism in the country more broadly.
number of complaints dealt with by First, if an antisemite is someone who dis-
Labour’s disciplinary apparatus reflects the plays a thoroughgoing and ideologically
real level of antisemitic incidents in the party inflected negativity towards Jews, then the
is not credible. The one thing we know number of antisemites in Britain is strikingly
about reported hate crime figures in general low and significantly lower than those with
is that they represent the tip of an iceberg. It corresponding views towards Muslims. In
is special pleading to think that Labour’s 2017 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research
data are in some way different. Second, the (JPR) estimated that the number who express
complaint that antisemitism is being used as multiple negative ideas about Jews with
a stick with which to beat the Labour Party varying degrees of confidence and ideologi-
is unworldly. From the ancient world to the cal certainty extends to roughly 5 per cent of
contemporary scene, political adversaries British adults. The Pew Global Attitudes sur-
have drawn attention to their opponents’ vey in spring 2019 similarly found 6 per cent
ethical weaknesses. In the case of the Cor- of adults in the UK expressing an unfavour-
byn-led Labour Party, it was politics as able view of Jews—similar to levels reported
usual when its rivals, both outside the party in western and northern Europe and signifi-
and within, drew attention to what they per- cantly lower than the levels of antisemitism
ceived to be a grave and persistent failure of reported in countries of eastern and southern
principle. When the tables are turned—as Europe.6
they are over Islamophobia in the Conserva- We can confidently label as antisemites
tive Party—this is just what the left does. the 5 per cent segment identified by JPR. But
Without doubt, there have been attempts to the number of antisemites is not the same
use Labour’s antisemitism for political thing as the spread of antisemitic ideas. This
advantage, and this has had significant con- is something the JPR survey also tried to
sequences. However, acknowledging this capture when it presented respondents with
dimension of the controversy does not a series of negative statements about Jews.
require us to assert a priori that allegations of Here, 13 per cent agreed with the view that
antisemitism are made in bad faith or that ‘Jews think they are better than other peo-
there has not been an underlying problem. ple’, 12 per cent agreed that the interests of
2 BEN GIDLEY ET AL.
The Political Quarterly © 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of
Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC)Jews are very different from the interests of surveys, the qualitative work of Hope not
others, and the same percentage agreed that Hate and others, and the testimony of many
Jews get rich at the expense of others, while Labour Party members. In this context, the
8 per cent agreed that Jews have too much question we need to ask is not whether there
power in Britain. Overall, 15 per cent of Bri- is a problem of antisemitism in the Labour
tish adults hold two or more of these antise- Party, but why the antisemitism that exists
mitic attitudes and a further 15 per cent hold within Labour rises to the surface.
at least one. In contrast to the small number We can approach this question by return-
of antisemites in the country, the diffusion of ing to the distinction between antisemites—
antisemitic attitudes, at different levels of thorough-going and often ideologically com-
intensity, reaches 30 per cent of the adult mitted racists—and the more diffuse antise-
population. The probability of self-censorship mitism that subsists in political culture. For
among some respondents means that this while antisemitic attitudes are broadly dis-
figure should be taken as an absolute mini- tributed, in recent times it is among Labour
mum. Party members and supporters that Jews are
If we ask where these negative attitudes more likely to be interpellated as subjects
are most likely to be found, we can turn to and as a problem within political debate.
polls conducted by YouGov in 2017 and This does not happen because Labour mem-
2019. These surveys found that men are bers are committed antisemites, but because
more likely than women to approve of an Jews intersect, or are perceived to intersect,
antisemitic statement, and that people at with some of the key issues they care about:
both ends of the adult age range (18–24 and Israel and Palestine, and the operation of
65+) are more likely to do so than other age power within capitalist society.
groups. At the same time, the surveys sug- In the former case, the 2019 YouGov sur-
gest that Labour Party supporters are no vey demonstrates how some Labour sup-
more likely than Conservative Party support- porters draw on the fund of antisemitic
ers to assent to an antisemitic proposition.7 ideas when faced with the individual and
In fact, in the case of the 2017 survey, Con- collective injustice suffered by Palestinians. It
servative Party voters were more likely to found that fully one quarter of Labour voters
agree with antisemitic opinions. In 2019 the agreed that ‘Israel can get away with any-
picture was more mixed, in part because the thing because its supporters control the
roster of questions was extended. Neverthe- media’. In other words, when Israel became
less, in that year 15 per cent of Conservative the topic of conversation these respondents
voters surveyed agreed that having a con- drew on the store of antisemitic stereotypes
nection to Israel makes Jewish people less —in this case on the hoary idea, at least 150
loyal to Britain than other British people, years old, that Jews control the media.
whereas among Labour voters the figure In the case of anti-capitalism, intentionally
was lower at 11 per cent. Conversely, 16 per- or not, the Labour Party under Jeremy Cor-
cent of Labour voters agreed that ‘compared byn’s leadership has fed from a longstanding
to other groups Jewish people have too tendency on the left to understand capitalism
much power in the media’, whereas among as a corrupt system shaped by the machina-
Conservative voters the figure was 14 per tions of a self-serving elite, rather than as a
cent. The broad picture is clear, however. A set of economic structures and relations. The
significant minority of supporters of both key slogan, ‘For the many not the few’, has
main political parties assent to antisemitic at times been appropriated by actors drawn
stereotypes and prejudices. to conspiratorial thinking. At this point Jews
This picture also presents a puzzle. Why is become vulnerable. Some Labour members
antisemitism a problem for Labour when, as and supporters have drawn on a pre-existing
we have seen, Conservative supporters too store of antisemitic attitudes in which Jews
are vulnerable to the same prejudice? The appear as the personification of finance capi-
idea that the controversy is the upshot of a tal and as the hidden hand pulling the levers
baseless smear campaign is one tendentious of power. When political debate turns to
response to this puzzle, but it is not persua- Israel and to finance capitalism, the diffuse
sive in the face of evidence from attitudinal antisemitic attitudes that exist latently as
LABOUR AND ANTISEMITISM: A CRISIS MISUNDERSTOOD 3
© 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Political Quarterly
Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC)one resource among others within British Jewish press in 2015, a phrase repeated word
culture can be mobilised; Jews are then for word in 2019 by Momentum founder Jon
racialised and abused in political discourse. Lansman and by Gordon Nardell, the lawyer
It has become a cliche to think of antise- the party brought in to oversee disciplinary
mitism as a virus. This trope predates the cases.8 In this rhetoric, because antisemitism
public health crisis that surrounds us at the is understood as only carried by antisemites,
time of writing. Antisemitism has long been insisting someone is not antisemitic appears
understood as a strange disease which to erase the problem. The reservoir approach
erupts in different times and places, creating to antisemitism shows that such responses
antisemites. But in Britain the problem is not are misplaced. The reservoir of antisemitic
one of limited pockets of committed, ideo- tropes can be drawn on wittingly or unwit-
logical antipathy. Rather, the problem is tingly by those who lack a commitment to
more widespread: negative and stereotypical an antisemitic worldview; antisemitism can
ideas about Jews which have accumulated be present in the absence of recognisable ‘an-
over centuries and are embedded deeply tisemites’.
within our culture. Instead of people who On the other side of the debate, the prob-
have been poisoned or who have caught a lem was seen as not one of a few bad apples,
contagion which now possesses them, we but of a host body afflicted with the sick-
see people reaching for antisemitic ideas at a ness; Labour was framed as a party riddled
particular moment to provide a simple and, with antisemites, requiring radical surgical
apparently, persuasive account of a problem attention in the form of large-scale expul-
they care about. If we should use a meta- sions. Mainstream Jewish organisations
phor to comprehend antisemitism, it is not made increasingly sweeping demands to
virus but reservoir: a deep reservoir of punish the offenders. Party leaders
stereotypes and narratives, one which is responded with assurances of a ‘zero toler-
replenished over time and from which peo- ance’ approach, but struggled to implement
ple can draw with ease. Indeed, the image of it.
a reservoir may help us to understand not The two responses—denial on the one
only antisemitism but also other racisms, hand and zero tolerance on the other—cre-
both within and beyond Labour. ated a dynamic in which relations between
the party and the Jewish community could
only deteriorate. The demand for zero toler-
Responding to antisemitism ance is almost certainly impossible to meet:
What are the political implications of the while antisemites might be rooted out, anti-
argument made above? What follows if we semitism, flowing through our political cul-
conceive antisemitism, not as a virus or poi- ture at large, cannot be. Meanwhile, denial
son, but as a reservoir of narratives and blocked the possibility of developing an
myths that can be taken as a resource in understanding of how antisemitism works as
specific historical and social contexts? In the a reservoir of ideas and images. At the same
recent Labour Party controversy, as we time, it prevented any serious coming to
noted at the start of this piece, both defend- terms with the hurt these ideas and images
ers and opponents of the party leadership cause, regardless of the intent of those who
shared a commitment to the virus metaphor. use them.
Two forms of politics followed from this. In the aftermath of the Corbyn leadership,
One was denial. Because the problem was there is an opportunity to escape this
understood as a problem of antisemites and dynamic. However, in the 2020 Labour lead-
not of antisemitism, defenders of the leader- ership election—to the anger of many in the
ship were quick to emphasise the small party grassroots who maintain the denialist
number of ‘real’ antisemites in the party. position—almost all candidates followed ear-
Those accused of broadcasting antisemitic lier patterns, asserting they would take a
tropes were often defended on the basis of ‘zero tolerance’ approach to antisemitism
not being antisemites. and finally ‘root out’ the problem.9 Again,
Corbyn ‘does not have an antiSemitic bone the reservoir idea points to the insufficiency
in his body’, a party spokesman told the of the purely disciplinary route. You can
4 BEN GIDLEY ET AL.
The Political Quarterly © 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of
Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC)expel antisemites, but you cannot expel anti- Labour who saw all allegations of antisemit-
semitism. ism as attempts to block criticism of Israel—
Instead, we propose an approach with five meant that the public debate often missed
key elements. First, activism against antise- the significance of anti-capitalism and con-
mitism should focus on antisemitism and not spiratorialism.
just antisemites: making people aware of the Similarly, an exclusive focus on antisemit-
tropes and the harm done by them, rather ism on the left leaves us unprepared to
than alleging that those who draw on these address the antisemitism that comes from
tropes are somehow irredeemably antisemi- elsewhere. In particular, from the political
tic. Second, there should be a deeper under- right, where it is surging globally, and could
standing of the reservoir of antisemitic ideas do so in Britain given the right circum-
and images circulating within political cul- stances. Our fifth and final way forward fol-
ture, and how that reservoir has been replen- lows directly from this. Political parties and
ished through time. In short: we need movements need to develop the political lan-
education. Third, political actors in the eye guage to speak to the crises to which antise-
of the storm need to practise self-scrutiny mitism responds without creating openings
rather than responding defensively or in the for antisemitism. For example, some
form of denial. This approach has the poten- responses to the crisis of global capitalism
tial to rebuild trust between political parties present a breach through which the reservoir
and British Jews, and in fact, builds on a sig- of antisemitism can flow. A narrative of a
nificant precedent. In April 2016 Labour MP “rigged economy” is not in itself antisemitic,
Naz Shah was accused of sharing antisemitic but it can be vulnerable to an antisemitic
content on social media. Instead of claiming articulation when the spotlight falls on elites
she had not an antisemitic bone in her body, as those who are doing the “rigging”. Other
Shah articulated a desire to understand and anti-capitalist narratives, which give greater
repair the hurt she had been told she had emphasis to structures and impersonal
caused. By refusing the debate on antisemitic forces, are more resistant to antisemitism.11
intent—the question of whether she was ‘an
antisemite’—Shah instead shifted our atten-
tion to language and imagery, that is, to the Anti-racism and the Labour
reservoir of antisemitic tropes on which she antisemitism crisis
unwittingly drew. Her response was widely
One striking element of Naz Shah’s response
praised by mainstream Jewish organisa-
to antisemitism in the spring of 2016 was her
tions.10
recognition that antisemitism is a form of
Fourth, an awareness of antisemitism as a
racism. I ‘didn’t get antisemitism as racism’,
reservoir, with some tropes persisting over
she said; now, though, she realised that
time and others emerging anew, should also
‘Antisemitism is racism, full stop’. Her
caution us to be aware of the range of
response drew on her own experiences and
sources of antisemitism. While the Israel/
opened with an identification as ‘someone
Palestine conflict was the context in which
who knows the scourge of oppression and
some left-wing activists turned to antisemitic
racism all too well’.12 This points towards
discourse, the antisemitism in the Labour
the intellectual and political potential of a
Party also drew on long histories of anti-cap-
multi-directional understanding of antisemit-
italist antisemitism, which in turn drew on
ism; one that is always in relation to other
Christian antisemitic themes, as well as on
racisms, from which a politics of solidarity
conspiratorial narratives. Anti-capitalist and
might emerge.
conspiratorial forms of antisemitism have
And yet for Labour and the wider left,
new resonance in the current conjuncture, as
such an anti-racist politics has been difficult
the increasingly opaque workings of global
to sustain. In this final section, we argue that
capitalism and the manifest injustices they
part of the reason Labour has not responded
produce push some actors to seek simplistic
more adequately to antisemitism is a contin-
explanations. A single-minded focus on anti-
ued difficulty in recognising antisemitism as
Zionist antisemitism—both from some main-
a form of racism. This reflects the changing
stream Jewish voices and from denialists in
LABOUR AND ANTISEMITISM: A CRISIS MISUNDERSTOOD 5
© 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Political Quarterly
Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC)place of ‘anti-antisemitism’ within the poli- In the wider anti-racist movement, divi-
tics of anti-racism in Labour and the left sions were growing between campaigns
more broadly. Half a century ago, opposition against antisemitism and those organised
to antisemitism and opposition to other around opposition to other forms of racism,
racisms were closely aligned, both intellectu- especially when articulated with the politics
ally and politically. This alignment is trace- of Zionism and anti-Zionism. The split, for
able in early academic work (such as that of example, between the Campaign Against
Michael Banton) on race relations in Britain Racism and Fascism (CARF) and Searchlight
in the 1950s and 1960s, which, though not magazine in the early 1990s over the ques-
always addressing antisemitism consistently, tion of Israel and Palestine, signalled the
nevertheless proceeded from a shared pre- direction of travel to come. Two decades on,
mise that Nazi antisemitism and colonial these divisions have grown further still. For
racisms drew upon similar sources: ‘irra- Labour, the parting of the ways was most
tional prejudice’ and the scientifically unten- sharply brought into view in the summer of
able idea of ‘race’. These connections 2018, at a peak in the party’s antisemitism
influenced the White Paper that led to the crisis, when over 100 Black, Asian and
Labour government’s Race Relations Act minority ethnic organisations signed an open
1976, drafted by Anthony Lester, who letter expressing dismay at Labour’s decision
described his path to anti-racism as one to adopt the International Holocaust Remem-
paved by the experience of ‘English antise- brance Alliance (IHRA) working definition.
mitism’. Further afield, these threads were The definition, said the signatories, would
pulled together most dramatically in the suppress any reckoning with colonial
scholarship of W. E. B. Du Bois and the sear- racisms, past and present.16
ing anti-colonial critique of Aime Cesaire.13 Within Labour, the parting of the ways
Today, however, these connections are slen- often animates debate on Israel and Pales-
der, and for many there has been a parting tine. Labour’s association with Zionism is
of the ways. In Labour and contemporary long-standing. At the time of the Six Day
British politics more generally, definitions of War in 1967, two-thirds of the parliamentary
antisemitism, racism and Islamophobia Labour Party were enrolled in Labour
abound, yet rarely are they joined up. Friends of Israel. And though support for a
This is a bifurcation long in the making. Palestinian state has grown in Labour since
Just over twenty-five years ago, the Run- the early 1980s, especially since the 1982
nymede Trust, Britain’s leading race equality Lebanon War, the party retained its commit-
think tank, issued its report into antisemit- ment to Israel constituted as a Jewish state.
ism, A Very Light Sleeper: the Persistence and However, the election of Corbyn as leader in
Dangers of Antisemitism.14 Significantly, the 2015 placed a question mark over that
report conceptualised antisemitism within a legacy. The party was now led by a long-
wider account of racism, and warned that standing advocate of the Palestinian national
these crucial connections had become ‘ob- cause. This signalled a change, not in policy
scured’ in recent political debate. The docu- as such—the party remained ostensibly com-
ment also drew attention to the relationship mitted to a two-state solution under Cor-
between antisemitism and what it byn’s leadership—but a change in the tone
labelled ‘Islamophobia’. This integrated con- and substance of political debate, particu-
ception of racism soon bore fruit: building larly within the wider membership, where
on the report, Runnymede’s Commission on instances of antisemitism had risen to the
British Muslims and Islamophobia in 1997 surface. This unsettling of Labour’s relation
published its pathbreaking work, Islamopho- to Zionism has exposed and accentuated the
bia: A Challenge for Us All, widely recognised parting of the ways.
as the first such study on the subject.15 In The obstacles that stand in the way of a
the 1990s, then, the creative work of thinking more integrated understanding of antisemit-
about antisemitism and other racisms ism are as conceptual as they are political,
together was still underway in the UK, but it and these difficulties are not Labour’s own;
was a project working under increasing they reflect important features in the way
strain. racism is understood today. In the UK, the
6 BEN GIDLEY ET AL.
The Political Quarterly © 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of
Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC)dominant paradigms for making sense of Entitled Freedom For Humanity, the mural
race, which emerged in the postwar depicted six men at a table dictating the
decades and have subsequently been influ- ‘New World Order’. When asked by the
enced by anti-racist struggles in the US, have local council to clarify his message, the mur-
had two key dimensions. First, they have al’s artist, Mear One, claimed the artwork
been colour-coded, synchronised with ideas depicted ‘class and privilege’, nothing
about whiteness, and, second, they emerged more.18 In fact, it offered a vision of class
through the politics of decolonisation in the stained through with modern antisemitism: a
second half of the twentieth century. critique of capitalism in which the forces of
These paradigms have tended to leave to global power are rendered ‘Jewish’; a racia-
one side the history and ongoing significance lised projection of ‘the Jew’ as an archetype
of antisemitism, and have implicitly posi- which stands above and in conflict with the
tioned Jews as unambiguously ‘white’—a oppressed. Yet, for all the attention the
problem already identified in Runnymede’s mural received, one thing seemed to elude
report on antisemitism twenty-five years most commentators: the mural depicted not
ago. In more recent times, the popularisation only Jews and Jewishness, but placed them
of analyses of racism centred on ‘white privi- in opposition to the pain and suffering of
lege’ derived from the specific context of the black and brown lives. At the same time, the
US but extended to Europe, has added an figuring of Jews as ‘white’ was made more
accelerant to these developments such that, explicit by the artist himself, when he wrote:
within prevailing accounts of racism, Jews ‘some of the older white Jewish folk in the
are not always perceived to be among its local community had an issue with me por-
victims. For Labour, where these anti-racist traying their beloved #Rothschild or #War-
paradigms have found a home, they have burg etc as the demons they are’.19 The
enabled a corresponding inattentiveness to episode seemed to capture the anomalous
the specificity of antisemitism, and, at times, position Jews sometimes occupy within an
a striking inability to recognise it as a form anti-racist imaginary focussed on whiteness
of racism. and empire.
These tensions within anti-racist politics Labour’s antisemitism controversy, then,
have played out in Labour’s antisemitism reflects a deepening divide among the forces
crisis. For instance, in 2011, when he was a that oppose racism. The moralising insistence
backbench Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn pro- on zero tolerance against antisemites and on
vided an introductory essay for a new edi- stamping out the virus will not address this
tion of John Atkinson Hobson’s classic divide. But a more rigorous understanding
radical 1902 text Imperialism. Corbyn ticked of antisemitism—as one specific form of
off Hobson for his racialised representations racism and as a reservoir of myths and
of black Africans, but passed over without images that circulate in our broader political
comment the antisemitic fulcrum of Hob- culture—as well as the steps we have set out
son’s argument, wherein finance capital, in this essay, may yet help us along the way.
Hobson’s essential vector of imperialism, is This is a matter of political will and vision.
identified as Jewish.17 Corbyn’s silence on We will soon know whether the party can
Hobson’s antisemitism represents another seize the opportunity.
illustration of the parting of the ways, of a
political culture in which some on the left
fail to recognise antisemitism, even when it Notes
is in front of their eyes. 1 See, for example, D. Rich, The Left’s Jewish
One of the most striking examples of this Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and AntiSemitism
was the notorious mural in Tower Hamlets, London, Biteback, 2016, especially pp. 239–42;
the cause of so much controversy in the P. Spencer, ‘The shame of antisemitism on the
spring and summer of 2018. Here we have a left has a long, malign history’, The Guardian, 1
powerful illustration of antisemitism appar- April 2018; https://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2018/apr/01/shame-of-anitsemit
ently aligned with the cause of social justice,
ism-on-left-has-long-malign-history (accessed 6
in which Jews are coded as white and placed April 2020).
front and centre within the financial elite.
LABOUR AND ANTISEMITISM: A CRISIS MISUNDERSTOOD 7
© 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Political Quarterly
Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC)2 See, for example, D. Graeber, ‘For the first time she becomes Labour leader’, PoliticsHome.com,
in my life, I’m frightened to be Jewish, and 10 February 2020; https://www.politicshome.c
non-Jews attacking the Labour party aren’t om/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/
helping’, OpenDemocracy, 6 September 2019; G. news/109763/lisa-nandy-promises-zero-tole
Philo, M. Berry J. Schlosberg, A. Lerman and rance-anti-semitism (accessed 8 April 2020).
D. Miller, Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the 10 N. Shah, ‘An apology to the Jewish commu-
Party and Public Belief, London, Pluto Press, nity’, HuffPost, 27 April 2016; https://www.
2019, pp. 30, 65–82, 160. huffingtonpost.co.uk/naz-shah/naz-shah_b_
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8 BEN GIDLEY ET AL.
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Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC)Workshop Online, 12 June 2019; http://www. to-remove-antisemitic-mural-showing-jew
historyworkshop.org.uk/imperialism-and-lab ish (accessed 8 April 2020).
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www.timesofisrael.com/london-council-set- cessed 8 April 2020).
LABOUR AND ANTISEMITISM: A CRISIS MISUNDERSTOOD 9
© 2020 The Authors. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Political Quarterly
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