Momentum

It wasn’t just Alistair Campbell types, Blairites, who defected from Labour to the Lib Dems or the Greens in the 23 May Euro-elections. Many left-wing Labour supporters defected too, or didn’t vote, disgusted by Labour’s equivocation on Brexit.

Socialism: where has it actually worked? Momentum and their hot new video are here to explain.

Left2030 is a website and statement set up a few months ago by people on the anti-Brexit left of the Labour Party – generally the soft left, with a scattering of more radical people.

The initial signatories include Paul Mason, Zoe Williams, Paul Hilder, Michael Chessum, Sam Tarry, Mary Kaldor, Manuel Cortes, and Luke Cooper, and Labour MPs Clive Lewis, Alex Sobel, Paul Sweeney, Rachael Maskell, and Preet Gill.

The Times (18 May) has splashed our denunciation of the wearing of the old Russian imperial emblem, the St George Ribbon, by some members of Lewisham Momentum. The incident is only a specially gaudy display of the general political trend of the section of the Labour supposed-left which gravitates around the Morning Star.

‪More on Lewisham Momentum and the New Stalinism here.‬ And here‬

At the AGM of the official Momentum group in Lewisham, south London, on 7 May, several people were proudly wearing, and handing out for others to wear, Russian military insignia: the ribbon of St. George.

Since September the CLP (Constituency Labour Party) representatives on Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) have all been broadly on the left, 8 of them supported by Momentum and all 9 by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.

The appointment (on 25 April) of Laura Murray to Head of Complaints for the Labour Party has real problems, whatever merits she may have.

Murray has been defended by Jon Lansman, chair of Momentum: “I can’t think of anyone better for this role. She’s developed wide knowledge about it [antisemitism], deeply wants to root it out, has engaged and worked with Jewish communities”.

Momentum recently announced a new campaign “Bankrupt Climate Change”. It is good that they are campaigning on climate issues. The way they are doing so lets Labour off the hook, and is inadequate and undemocratic. It nonetheless provides opportunities for building a socialist environmentalist campaign.

Jon Lansman talked to Solidarity.

You've said that the concern about antisemitism in the Labour Party is based on realities, not something contrived or invented. Why do you say that?

Because I've seen loads and loads of cases at the National Executive, and I know them to be real. I also know that those cases are very rarely to do with Israel-Palestine.

This is in some ways the biggest crisis of parliamentary politics ever in British history. Brexit dominates politics in a way no issue has done since, perhaps, the miners’ strike of 1984- 5. Yet the biggest Labour left grouping, Momentum, has remained silent on Brexit.