Laura K / Israel’s War on Gaza / Abbott & Teal / Galloway & Clews (again)

A series of short bits in The Left Lane today on March 27

Thank Goodness for Laura K

Do you ever have a morning like I had last week? 

You wake up and start to read the headlines of what happened overnight—or at least what mainstream media says happened and that you need to know.

You watch a clip of Jared Kushner—Trump’s son-in-law and his Middle East advisor while he was president—saying in a speech at Harvard University that the Israelis should “bulldoze something in the Negev (desert) […] move people (Palestinians) there” because “Gaza’s waterfront property would be very valuable”. Should I be watching for a Trump Jr. Tower under construction any day now?

You flip on Sky TV to learn that the lead-off story on the 6:00 a.m. news is on how the Royals are involved in a second Photoshop disgrace. And the late Queen is in the photo. Mercy me.   

Then you read that Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has given a major speech on what Labour would do on the economy if elected. Reeves cites the year of 1979—Thatcher’s launch pad—as her inspiration. All this in the same week as it is announced that “300,000 more children were plunged into absolute poverty in a single year”.  

Meanwhile a senior French government official tells us we need to get ready for war with Russia.

“What a world!” you think. “I‘ve had enough.” (Not really. My life is in a very good place these days.)

But then you read Laura K on her “Normal Island News” and the absurdity of it all gets put into perspective.

Every era and every country needs a resident satirist and parodist. I nominate Laura K as ours.

Check out a few of her recent headlines:

• Sunak unable to condemn racist because he gave him lots of money¹

• Propagandist sacked by Israel for not lying well enough²

• Police officer given refresher training to not stamp on people³

Why not consider subscribing? You can do so here.

Let’s not forget when we get our ballot papers

Monday’s historic call by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza did nothing to side-track the Israeli killing machine.

Within hours, that machine—which has now killed more than 32,000 Palestinians and turned most of Gaza into a desolate pile of rubble—had returned to its genocidal mission and killed a coach load of innocent civilians, including many children.

Their playgrounds in Gaza remain dangerous ‘no go’ zones. Israel continues to wage a "war on their childhoods" and Palestinian children (and their parents) are screaming in hunger.

Israel even more isolated

As expected, the UNSC resolution did not end the war on Gaza.  And now that Israel is even more isolated in the world, the Netanyahu government may get even more rabid in upcoming weeks.

Meanwhile, we are witnessing all the usual reactions to Monday’s vote. Only one UK national newspaper decided that the UN resolution should be its lead front-page news story on Tuesday. In Washington, the White House stance is that the US decision to abstain from voting on the UNSC resolution represented "no change" in its positon. Oh well. Mind you, Joe Biden does remain a life-long Zionist.

Two things were not mentioned by the mainstream media.

a) the UNSC resolution passed primarily due to the immense courage of the Palestinian people; and

b) it is also down to the truly heartening global solidary movement in support of their cause.

Can we add one more thought?

Whenever PM Sunak calls a general election, don’t forget who stood where concerning Israel’s genocide.

A poster put into some London bus shelters in February 2024

Members of political parties are NOT serfs

If your boss were to send you an email today stating, “you are terminated effective immediately, your pay stops today, and I will inform you in 18 months or more whether the termination is permanent”, your response would likely be unprintable.

Those who could articulate a response might say something like, “god that’s old fashioned” or “talk about regressive” or “that harks back to the days when employment law was called master and servant law”.

Yet in many respects, our so-called ‘modern’ political parties often operate in similarly paternal, top-down and anti-democratic ways. And are similarly cruel.

They expect their members to tug their forelock, grin and bear abuse, and otherwise act as if they were mere serfs trespassing on the estates of the landed gentry, the sirs and ladies of the 18^th centuries. In other words, be akin to subjects in a sweatshop.

How such parties handle disciplinary matters typifies this approach. This short piece looks at only one aspect of the process: how long it takes to reach a decision.

Let’s examine two cases: long-time London (and currently no party) MP Dianne Abbott and currently suspended Green Alison Teal of Sheffield.

MP Dianne Abbott, Labour (London) and Alison Teal, Suspended from the Green Party (Sheffield )

The Abbott and Teal Cases

As is quite well known, left winger Abbott, the first black woman ever elected to the House of Commons, lost the whip as a Labour MP for Hackney in April 2023 after she wrote a letter to a national newsletter on the subject of racism. She says it was sent by mistake, quickly retracted the letter and apologised. Now, eleven months later, the Labour whip has still not been restored.

Teal, once a cabinet member on Sheffield City Council, is known in Green Party circles, but is not a nationally recognised figure. In 2022, Teal was selected to be the GP candidate in the Sheffield Central constituency. After Teal posted a tweet on the trans issue, former GP leader Natalie Bennett refused to confirm the local party vote and Teal was suspended in October 2022. Now in late March 2024, Teal remains suspended.

Numerous other long stalled cases

‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ is a truism you learn in the first year of law school.

I taught law in the UK for 17 years and I know one thing: if Keir Starmer had been in my class and expressed the view on an exam that delays in decision making were  unimportant, he would have been marked down—and a lot!

One study assessing “how democratic a system is” stresses the importance of taking decisions ‘without unnecessary delays’. Labour and the Greens fail that test in discipline cases.     

There are numerous other long-delayed cases of MPs and members within Labour. The Greens also have a serious backlog, stemming from incompetent and inexperienced decision makers, timidity, misplaced evidence, and other cock-ups.

A badly distorted lens

But the wider problem is that both Labour and the Greens (and some other parties as well) look at party disciplinary matters through a badly-distorted lens.

Their problem starts with a misunderstanding of what political parties are all about. They are voluntary associations of political activists who have banded together under a common flag to build a cause and take part in a party in which they believe.

Some spend hundreds of hours on party work—ever pushed 1000 leaflets through mail slots on a rainy Sunday morning?—and may donate hundreds of £££. Why? In part, because politics can take over your heart and mind.

In return, party members deserve respect. They certainly don’t deserve to be bounced out of their own party for 18 months (or longer) at a stretch and often based on the tittle tattle of a local political opponent or based on a party leadership’s desire to silence critics.

They are actually political disputes

There is second misunderstanding about so-called “discipline” cases.  In fact, many are actually political disputes based on political or ideological disagreements. If they were really discipline cases, many could be resolved swiftly.

In the case of Abbott and Teal, for example, both allegedly sent out brief messages with a certain content. The content was no mystery. Both of their parties have a rule book.

So there are only two issues to decide: did their messages breach the party rule book or not? If they did, what’s the appropriate penalty if any?

Unlike complex murder trials that necessitate forensic evidence, expert witnesses, and extensive cross-examinations, a panel of impartial and experienced adjudicators could reasonably reach a verdict in both such cases within a few hours.

Therefore, explanations such as Starmer's assertion that Abbott's case is prolonged due to the need for an independent investigation by the Labour Party outside his control are mere obfuscation.

Leaders from the Green Party would likely echo Starmer's sentiments with similar bafflegab regarding the Teal case.

In contrast, when these cases are treated as political disputes and where the outcomes may carry broader political or personal power implications, the resolution process can be protracted, often spanning months or even years. And it often is.

Proposing one minor reform

This Left Lane post only examines one aspect of so-called ‘party disciplinary procedures’.  We will return to others.

But for now, the need for one minor reform is obvious. Political parties should establish a maximum time period for the investigation and resolution of their internal discipline cases.

After discussing the matter with several people with legal training and expertise in discipline cases, a maximum of four months is plenty of time for 95% of the cases. Exceed that time period and the case would be dropped.

Bringing in such a reform would be one small step towards ending the abuse of party members by party brass and party bureaucrats.

Note: For context and completeness, I should add I was a fellow campaigner with Alison Teal against Sheffield’s street tree massacres of a few years ago, I know her and was myself suspended (for five months) in 2019-20 by the Green Party just after I was elected as chair of the local party.

“Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes”

George Galloway and the Workers Party of Britain (WPB) that he leads are providing Daily Telegraph journalists with a bountiful catch of ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ news stories.

Take last week’s example involving the recently-elected MP for Rochdale, Kate Middleton and the far right conspiracy theorist David Clews. In any serious and member-controlled socialist party, Galloway’s embarrassing foolishness would have been a sacking offence… or at least have generated a petition among the membership to do so.

As you know—how could you miss it?—the Princess of Wales has been at the centre of a national and even international media frenzy for several weeks as to whether a family photo taken after an operation had been altered by photoshop.

Typical “keep ‘em distracted” stuff from the tabloids and the BBC.

Then The Sun brought out an ‘exclusive’ video of Middleton. Galloway jumped in full bore. In a 22 March tweet promoting his MOATS YouTube programme, the WPB leader gave his conclusion “It’s clearly not Kate Middleton in the Sun video. It’s a woman 20 years younger...”

Bring on the expert Clews

So who did Galloway call in as an expert guest to authenticate this wacky conclusion?  None other David Clews.

I know the views of Clews: I follow his email thread and, prior to the Rochdale by-election, I interviewed him for more than 40 minutes while I was researching a three-part investigation on Galloway and his Workers Party. Here is the link to one piece, “How the Workers Party of Britain works hand in glove with right-wingers, racialists, and conspiracy theorists”.

Indeed, Clews is ‘a notorious conspiracy theorist’ as Daily Telegraph journalist Will Hazell has accurately tweeted. He is worse than that. In our February interview, Clews also told me he wants an “immediate end to all immigration (to the UK), both legal and illegal” and spouted typical anti-scientific bumph about vaccines.

Galloway has worked with Clews before, as my investigation revealed, and to call in Clews as an expert on the authenticity of Middleton’s video makes no sense whatsoever.

In any event, Middleton then released a second video on 22 March in which she explained that she was in the early stages of chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

The stance of Galloway and release of the 22 March video gave Hazell an opportunity to post a few tweets which we have pasted in here.

Clews is thrilled by all the publicity he is getting, again says he admires Galloway, and has now given a further pronouncement on his email feed. “It [the 22 March video] is clearly a fake AI/computer generated clip and my conclusions are now sadly that she is either in a coma or she is dead.”  

Why give crackpots a platform?

Why does Galloway—who calls himself a broadcaster and socialist—keep giving a platform to such right wing crackpots?

I know a number of people who have spent their whole life trying to build an alternative party for the working class and to transcend the brutishness of the current world order. Many of the pronouncements of self-proclaimed working class heroes like George Galloway seriously undermine the credibility of their message.

In 2024, some have again been seduced by the oratory of Galloway, an arch publicity-seeker.

Our movement does not need people like him.

Or as Bertolt Brecht once observed: “unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.”

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Video of the Week:

An in-depth and no-holds-barred film by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit called "7 October".

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Edited by Alan Story, The Left Lane is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can reach us at: theleftlanepolitics@gmail.com

1. Sunak unable to condemn racist because he gave him lots of money

2. Propagandist sacked by Israel for not lying well enough

3. Police officer given refresher training to not stamp on people