‘Austerity, Abandonment and Silence on Israel/Palestine: The Day I left Labour ’

by Thomas Kiernan - Respect Party Member (North West)

    Before I begin this, let me set the background. I come from a traditional, working-class background in the North of England. My mother is English, but the child of Irish immigrants to Britain in the 50’s. My family has, more or less, voted Labour their entire lives and would not dream of voting for anybody else. Whilst I have followed George Galloway and the Respect Party for years, I did not commit to being a member until several months ago.

   I was in Gdansk a few weeks ago, having treated my grandmother to a holiday for all her support during the three years I have been at University, when I stumbled across the news that veteran Labour MP, Dennis Skinner, had been voted off the Labour National Executive Committee. I was immediately infuriated; Skinner is one of the few true Labour politicians left in the Party. Much like George, he stands for many of the things which the Respect Party is championing alone: an end to austerity, the support of trade-unions and, above all, equality and peace. However, his Party have abandoned all of those concepts and adopted the Conservative policy of refusing to end austerity measures and promising to be ‘tougher than the Tories on welfare’. With Skinners removal, it is clear that the Party is going for a younger, more centred approach to try and emulate Tony Blair’s success in 1997. They may have some nice sound-bites (regulate energy companies, free childcare and decentralisation), but nothing of substance and certainly nothing which has enticed me to support them come 2015.

   Already apathetic and disillusioned with Labour and any major party, I had considered cancelling my membership with the Party there and then. Then the real kicker: Miliband has been silent over the recent events in Gaza which have seen roughly 600 Palestinians die and several thousand injured in the indiscriminate (or ‘precision’) bombing of innocent lives. Miliband, on his trip in April to Israel, had publicly denounced the increasing illegal settlements but has never gone as far as to publicly condemn Israel for its horrendously poor treatment of the Palestinian people whom they subject to a life of internment and poverty on a daily basis. What has happened to the man who looked likely to bring Labour back to the left, to return to its stance as the Party of peace and opportunity? His silence is, to me, as bad as Michael Gove’s admittance that he is a ‘committed Zionist’ and the USA’s constant defence of the Israeli government. It seems tragic that the UK, who was complicit in the USA’s killing of over one million civilians in Iraq, is still comprised of leaders not willing to learn from its mistakes and immediately order sanctions on Israel until it ceases raining death over Gaza, sit down at the table with Abbas and finally broker a deal which will see the Palestinians receive fair and just compensation for the misery to which they have been subjected.

   That, for me, was the final straw on a very strong back, and so my membership is now in the post. I refuse to support a Party which has adopted a name for which its policies do not represent, and I refuse to vote for any Party which does not have a firm commitment to equality both nationally and overseas. The Labour Party is dead; what remains is a walking frame of opportunity which regularly gets overlooked and increasingly sucked in to the political centre. What remains is something which will soon be considered like it will help no-one, speak for no-one and can be trusted by few. If first-past-the-post was abandoned, the Labour Party would be forced to kick itself into gear, to become a party which people would want to be a part of. As it stands, it remains little more than a bleak alternative to the Tories. I am convinced that, if Labour does indeed succeed come May, it won’t be because they’re a party of change. It’ll be because they’re the better of two very, very poor choices. 

Why the world needs to get tough on Israel’s ‘never-never land’ mentality.

Unmasking Israeli myths is the first step on the long road to peace.

Respect Op-Ed

   Gaza is under attack again; the third sustained aerial bombardment since 2008. In the world’s largest prison camp (the words of well-known Hamas operative David Cameron), the number of dead has now risen to over 160, with women and children making up a depressingly high percentage. The Israeli armed forces rain down indiscriminate death and destruction, giving nothing more than an occasional perfunctory warning, onto the defenceless people below.

   This routine has become something of a political blood-sport in Israel. This recent wave of the crisis began with the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers near Hebron in the occupied West Bank. I was in Israel when the kidnapping happened and visited the site where the teenagers had been taken. As soon as the story broke the Israeli government were blaming Hamas, without any real clarification as to whether it had even been sanctioned by its central command as opposed to being committed by underground militants. The speed at which this narrative became accepted reality says much about the loyalties of mainstream media.

   The emotional outcry in Israel was remarkable, given that such events have become so commonplace in the Israeli conscience. Within days, everyone was on first-name terms with the teenagers. You couldn’t drive along any road without coming across a reference to the #BringBackOurBoys campaign. Once their bodies had been discovered, the atmosphere turned from grief, to anger, to vengeance. Within hours, #BringBackOurBoys had been replaced with #AvengeOurBoys. The inevitable result was the copy-cat kidnapping and murder of a 16-year old in East Jerusalem, one of at least six deaths in the days that followed. And that was before the bombing began…

   The grossly disproportionate response and collective punishment demonstrated by Israel in the wake of such periods of turmoil has become normalised. Not many people in Israel – or in the Western mainstream media, it appears – regard the life or blood of Palestinians as being as valuable as their own.

   This is the institutionalisation of an occupation at work. In the beachfront cafés and smart shopping centres of Tel Aviv to the sleek suburbs of West Jerusalem, nobody much cares for the occupation on the West Bank or for the disastrous humanitarian effect of the siege on Gaza. That is until their peace is shattered by the wail of the air-raid siren and they have to retreat temporarily into a reinforced bomb shelter (a luxury not afforded to many Palestinians, who just have to take their chances).

   This is why I don’t buy the “you don’t know what it’s like” argument that I hear from many Israelis. Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip has as yet mercifully failed to take a single Israeli life. Israeli bombing raids in Gaza, one of the most densely-populated areas on earth, are causing casualties which now run into the hundreds. The mismatch is glaring – not that you’d know it if you were watching the BBC. On Wednesday they led with the laughable headline ‘Israel under renewed Hamas attack’. The seething anger felt by Palestinians and Muslims generally is fed by this blatant double-standard which tells them that their lives are somehow not worth as much.

   This exceptionalism is now engendered in an Israeli society which is becoming forever more rabidly right-wing and forever less interested in a peace process, choosing instead to ‘manage’ the conflict. The settlement drive continues unabated, to the point where its continuation is on the verge of killing off the two-state solution forever. This is the ‘never-never’ land that supporters of Israel are living in: they think they can carry on with the reality of occupation because of their ‘exceptional’ circumstances; their opponents around the world just don’t ‘get’ the realities of their situation. But millions around the world are now calling their bluff.

    The onus is on Israel, and Israeli society, to change this. Israel holds the keys to occupation and they are to only ones who can unlock Palestinian statehood and freedom for its people. Failing this very unlikely prospect (the radical right is historically strong enough to resist it), it will be up to the international community to force a solution. There are signs that some countries are beginning to tire of Israel’s behaviour of exceptionalism.

   This conflict did not begin with the kidnapping of three Israelis, and will not end with any fragile ceasefire. It is tied up in the continuing Israeli occupation and supremacy, institutionalised through a complex societal framework over decades. A comprehensive process involving all parties from both sides is the only way to achieve a lasting settlement and help stability for the whole region. The only way that is going to happen is if Israel commits to it, or is given no other choice. That prospect looks as distant as ever.

Preconceptions are the womb of prejudice. Its sad, but it's true.

By Steven Mackie


There's a story doing the rounds from Fife Police about someone who was

electrocuted trying to pinch some copper cable, and it seems the consensus
is that he had what was coming to him. Quite often from people who, if
pressed, would be against child poverty, the bedroom tax, shocked at food
banks and aghast at the thought of a bairn sitting down to watch his or her
mother cry because they only had Pot Noodle for Christmas dinner.
Preconceptions are the womb of prejudice, so I'll tell you a wee Christmas
story that is as true as anything I can ever say.

Many many years ago, when I was but a wee toddler, around three I think, I
lived in a fairly poverty stricken farm cottage with four elder siblings.
My Mother was a farm labourer (a job that helped kill her in the end), but
at least she coulnt be accused of being a sponger. On the weather beaten
fields all around Glasmount Hill and the Binn and Banchory she toiled,
picking tatties, going to the dressing, thinning neeps - manual labour. So,
when I was the wee-est one, she had no choice but to be taken into the
fields with her. Swaddled in as much warm clothing as I could carry on my
tiny bones, there I tottered in the tattie fields as the squads bent to
their work.

Now, about this time a black man arrived, blown in on the trade winds from
the West Indies; a man called Larry. And Larry became the man in charge of
the squads at Tyrie farm (just outside Kirkcaldy on the Kinghorn road). I
cannot for the life of me remember his face, as much as Ive tried these
past 47 years since. But I DO remember the feel of peculiar feel (to a
Scottish child) his afro hair, the thrill of being lofted on his giant
shoulders, the welcoming warmth of his greatcoat. I can half 'see' him in a
field at the side of the Jawbane road. I sadly cant recall him fully but I
DO know that we were inseparable. How do I know this?

Well, it came to pass that the work ended as crops do and the land slumbers
beneath our feet through winter. The money dried up and, as there were no
benefit entitlements -especially for Black immigrant workers - like there
are now, Larry must have found himself in a very unenviable position:
Thousands of miles from what the slave traders had told his grandparents to
call home, in a strange country. A country growing colder as the season
progressed, with no-where to turn to - and no-one to care even if he
arrived there. So, he took himself over to Seafield Colliery, maybe to get
some sea coal to sell (a common enough practice, believe me) and saw some
cables laying on the ground. There are no coal mines in the Caribbean,
which might have led him to think of it as defunct ... I cannot say. But he
decided to cut it up and heft it to the scrap yard. And thats where they
found him the next day, dead, on the cold wintery shores of the River
Forth.

Now, few people will know the 1960s farming life, but as it was, a lot of
our purchases came via by Butcher and Bakers van. There was a fair stream
of men in suits selling brushes and polishes, Insurance, Rent men, Ticky
men etc. In effect, a whole network of people who could bring and carry
news from far and wide. Of course, as a toddler, I cant remember the actual
events themself, nor was I there. But I DO remember a man in a suit coming
to see us - Mum - at what must have been just after the funeral. I remember
the gist of the conversation too, in which he said to Mum, in front of me
that as Larry was a pauper (legally) and the only thing he had of value
when they found his body was a pocket watch. The Farmer at Tyrie had known
how fond of each other we were, and arranged 'through the grapevine' to
have it brought to our cottage and he gave it to Mum saying "He'd want
Steven to have it".

Ive always been secretly pleased that, despite my many, many mistakes in
life, I possess a redeeming kernel of truth in the fact that the first
black person I even met loved me, and I loved him ... And I still have the
watch to prove that every adult for miles in every direction knew it.

Preconception is the womb of prejudice - so before you condemn this
unfortunate to an eternity of Hell for cutting through some bits of wire,
take a moment to consider that it might have been sheer, heart rending
desperation that drove him to do so, and not the callous greed that suits a
negative preconception.