Ken Livingstone

The problem with Ken Livingstone’s “evidence”

Ken Livingstone states he gets his evidence and ideas for his comments on Hitler and Zionism from Lenni Brenner’s books. This review of two of Brenner’s books, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, was published in Socialist Organiser on 4 October 1984. Denial of the holocaust has become the stock-in-trade of the far right in Europe and the USA, from Richard Harewood’s Did Six Million Really Die? to Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Century. That pro-Nazis should seek to excuse their heroes of one of the greatest crimes in history can...

Livingstone, Labour and Anti-Semitism

On one level the sudden media outcry about Ken Livingstone’s anti-semitism is being used and fed by the Labour right, especially the stupid part of the right — and, of course, the Tories — to sabotage the Labour Party in the London mayoral and other local government elections and to discredit Jeremy Corbyn. Livingstone has been what he is now for decades. He was the same Livingstone when the Blairite right took him back into the Labour Party, in 2004, after his 2000-4 term as London mayor. The bigger truth, however, is that, whatever their motives, those who cry out against Livingstone’s...

When anti-Zionism and anti-semitism are the same

Dan Katz compares the Socialist Worker Party′s position on the Livingstone anti-semitism row to what we say. SWP: Anti-Zionism and anti-semitism are not the same thing. AWL: Not necessarily the same; but quite often they are. The anti-Zionists who carry placards equating Israel with Nazi Germany are anti-semitic. The anti-Zionists who oppose Israel by picketing “Jewish” shops like Marks and Spencers are anti-semitic. The anti-Zionists who complain about Zionist-led media are anti-semitic. And the anti-Zionists who pick on Israeli Jews — uniquely — as a people without the right to a state are a...

A portrait of Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party, patron of the Livingstone Labour Left, in 1980

For describing the WRP as a cross between the Moonies, the Scientologists, and the Jones Cult, which exploited young people, etc.,John Bloxam and Sean Matgamna were in 1981 sued for libel by the actress Vanessa Redgrave. This portrait of the WRP was part of an appeal for labour movement support in fighting the libel action. The WRP was then subsidising and producing Labour Herald, the paper of the Livingstone Labour left. Some readers have asked us for more information about the WRP, the organisation which is threatening to bankrupt Socialist Organiser [predecessor of the Alliance for Workers...

Livingstone: goodbye and good riddance

Conceding defeat in the contest for London mayor, on 3 May, Ken Livingstone said: “This is my last election”. As with many things Livingstone says, it’s not true. Livingstone is a candidate on the “centre-left” list in Labour’s National Executive this year. Though many of those who have nominated him will confirm privately that Livingstone is utterly unreliable on the Executive, they think they have no choice but to have him on the list, because he’s a potential winner and a reliable right-winger might replace him. But in the mayoral contest Livingstone won much less than the Labour vote...

Vote Labour, expel Livingstone

Two bottom lines: vote Labour. And expel Livingstone from the Labour Party. If poor Eric Joyce can be expelled simply for getting pissed and punching a few Tories, then surely Livingstone’s blatant anti-semitism should be sufficient to get him booted out. I’ve campaigned and voted for candidates as bad as Livingstone before: Liam Byrne for one. Voting Labour is a class duty, not a petty bourgeois choice. But that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate whatever the Party machine serves up. Miliband’s defence of Livingstone is disgraceful. Livingstone must be expelled. But until he is, we must...

Ken Livingstone and anti-semitism

A letter from prominent Jewish Labour Party supporters to party leader Ed Miliband, leaked to the press around 21 March, has expressed some profound concerns following a 1 March meeting between party activists and London mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone. The letter’s authors are by no means left-wingers. They criticise Livingstone for being too stridently hostile to what he considers “bourgeois” elements (if only!) and characterise his politics as “infantile far-left”. But one does not have to endorse the wider politics of the authors to conclude that most of their criticisms of Livingstone’s...

Vote Livingstone... very critically

Ken Livingstone has aligned himself with the Occupy movement and attacked the tax-avoiding rich. Now, however, it seems he is one of them himself. There has been a minor scandal in the media because Livingstone and his wife set up a company to channel money from his media appearances and speeches — allowing them to avoid the 50% income tax rate and pay 20% corporation tax instead. It’s right that there should be a scandal. It’s a shame it’s so far mostly limited to the press, and limited to the issue of tax-dodging. The real issue here is that Livingstone is a very rich man trying to get...

London mayor election: vote Labour, but have no faith in Livingstone

With the London Mayoral Elections approaching, many socialists will feel conflicted. On the one hand, we have the opportunity to remove Boris Johnson, the Tory incumbent who has spent the last year hiking fares, cutting services and making clear his desire to curtail the rights of trade unionists. On the other hand, in most elections anyway, many socialists feel reluctant to call for a Labour vote. In contrast, in the absence of decent, properly-based independent working-class/socialist candidates, the AWL is in favour of voting Labour - because, despite all the changes, Labour is still a...

Vanessa Redgrave, the WRP and Libyan money

The British Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) was a sizeable organisation up to its implosion in 1985. From 1976, in order to fund its daily paper, Newsline , the WRP took money from Libya, Iraq and other vicious dictatorships, rewarding its paymasters with anti-Jewish propaganda and support for those regimes, dressed up as “anti-imperialism”. In 1981, actress Vanessa Redgrave, the WRP’s best known member, sued our comrades John Bloxam and Sean Matgamna for libel for comparing the WRP to the Moonie sect and the Scientologists, and for reporting that the WRP used systematic emotional and...

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