Starmer’s inconsistency with racism is worrying
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer is wasting no time in dealing with racism in his party. Or at least that is the impression he is desperately trying to give.
In an interview with the Independent, prominent English actress Maxine Peake, claimed that kneeling on the neck, the tactic the US police used to kill George Floyd, was learnt from seminars with the Israeli secret services.
However, despite this being is an issue that has been previously raised by Amnesty International and several other human rights organisations, it was considered an anti-Semitic conspiracy trope.
So, when the Shadow Education Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey shared the interview on her Twitter with the comment ‘Maxine Peake is an absolute diamond’, it was her last act as a member of the shadow cabinet. Within hours of tweeting her praise of the article, she was sacked by Starmer.
‘The article Rebecca shared earlier today contained an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory’, a Labour spokesman said.
‘As leader of the Labour party, Keir has been clear that restoring trust with the Jewish community is a number one priority. Anti-Semitism takes many different forms and it is important that we all are vigilant against it.’
Soon afterwards, the Labour leader accentuated his stance in an interview with the BBC. ‘Rebuilding trust with the Jewish community is a number one priority for me’, he affirmed.
On April 4th 2020, after his landslide victory in the leadership election, one of the first things he reinforced was his desire to ‘tear out the poison’ of anti-Semitism in the party.
Indeed, he recently held a video meeting with representatives of the UK Jewish community from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Community Security Trust and the Jewish Labour Movement, with the focus being on restoring the trust of the community.
His measures on anti-Semitism have prompted three Jewish peers who quit the party when Corbyn was at the helm to re-join, which suggests he is making headway in his quest.
Problematically, although he is thoroughly trying to expunge one form of racism, Starmer appears to be nonchalant about other forms of racism.
When an internal 860-page report was leaked in April about the party’s handling of anti-Semitism, Starmer’s first reaction was to launch an urgent inquiry into the matter.
That same report uncovered how Black female MP’s are treated with utter contempt and have to endure distressing levels of racism.
The report details how in February 2017, Diane Abbott, the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP and former Shadow Home Secretary, was crying in the toilet having just received more ghastly abuse in the form of rape and death threats — something she suffers daily. Yet senior staff in the party were insensitively discussing whether to tell Michael Crick, a Channel 4 reporter at the time, of her whereabouts.
Other senior staff members referred to Abbott as a ‘very angry woman’ in what the report asserted ‘could be considered a classic racist trope’. And another member claimed Abbott’s appearance on BBC Question Time was the reason he watched it with no sound.
What is disturbing is that such incendiary sentiments are ostensibly the norm and not the exception in the party. Another Black female MP, Dawn Butler, received the same treatment. Upon her promotion to the shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, one staff member’s response was ‘good grief’.
No such resolute and decisive action was prioritised by Starmer to eradicate the unprovoked discrimination on that occasion.
His indifference is particularly conspicuous when it comes to the concerns raised by other minority communities about global tragedies.
Nowhere is this more palpable than with the plight of the Palestinians. Israel is just days away from potentially annexing large chunks of the West Bank, in a move which not only violates international law, but also deals a death blow to Palestinian self-determination and any dreams of a future state. It will essentially legitimise the already pervasive Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel.
A pertinent example of this was the recent fatal shooting of 27 year old Ahmad Erekat by Israeli forces as he was on his way to his sister’s wedding. Such gross impropriety has the potential to heighten as Israel consolidates its domination.
The fact that Starmer has subscribed to the notion that shedding light on the brutality of Israel’s security forces is now considered anti-Semitic, apace with his reluctance to penalise Israel’s annexation via sanctions, shows sheer disregard for and concurrently silences the Palestinian struggle.
On the situation in Kashmir his management is no better. One of the first things Starmer did as leader was meet with the Labour Friends of India team, which prompted him to emphasise that Labour viewed the Kashmir conflict as a ‘bilateral issue’ for India and Pakistan to resolve.
This engendered outrage among Muslims and provoked a handful of Muslim Labour MP’s to underline their support for Kashmiri rights. Likewise, in April, over 100 British mosques and Islamic centres signed a letter to Starmer saying they would urge Muslims to abstain from voting for Labour unless it supported Kashmiri self-determination.
Starmer remained apathetic though and reiterated that the party’s position on Kashmir had not changed.
Just in the past year, Narendra Modi’s far right Indian government has revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which represented Kashmir’s limited autonomy ergo denying the Kashmiri nation’s right to self-determination. This has been accompanied by brutal crackdowns and increased repression.
Exclusionary and Islamophobic laws have also been passed, such as The Citizenship Act, which has led to the disenfranchisement of millions of Muslims and is widely seen as a step towards ethnic cleansing.
Thus in June, over 600 Labour members from the South Asia Solidarity Group signed an open letter expressing concern about Starmer’s position on Kashmir, which effectively emboldens Modi’s Hindu supremacist agenda. But again, it fell on instructive deaf ears.
That a former international human rights lawyer leads the Labour Party and yet remains mute as racism prevails in sections of his own party and abroad, underscores that his commitment to racism is regrettably selective.
Such consistent inconsistency is alarming.
