Defend Jeremy Corbyn!

 Even though the May government is clearly on its last legs the Tories can always rely on the fifth column within the Parliamentary Labour Party to spread confusion and undermine the Corbyn leadership whenever Labour takes the lead in the opinion polls.

Last week Margaret Hodge condemned her own leader in the Commons chamber over the Labour's alleged failure to adopt all aspects of the definition of anti-Semitism that was endorsed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Mrs Hodge, who calls herself a secular immigrant Jew, confronted Jeremy Corbyn behind the Speaker's Chair and called him "a fucking anti-Semite and a racist", a claim she repeated, without the expletive, in print. 

This isn’t the first time Mrs Hodge has entered the fray against Corbyn. The Barking MP is a supporter of ‘Labour Friends of Israel’ and was responsible for triggering the failed 2016 coup attempt against Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a spokeswoman for the Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) movement, said: “They're out to get Jeremy Corbyn, and Margaret Hodge, who is leading this charge, has been an enemy of his before he even became leader. She's been an enemy of his forever and there are plenty of records of her being involved in altercations with him.”

Although Labour intends to take disciplinary action against Hodge, Corbyn’s number two, John McDonnell, seems anxious to play it down. The Shadow Chancellor told the media this week that her outburst was due to her “complete misinterpretation” of the party’s new code of conduct. But it was “out of character” because she was “extremely angry and lost her cool” when she confronted the Labour leader.

Despite some welcome departures most of the Labour bureaucracy remains in the grip of the Blairites. Anyone whose support for Palestinians goes beyond the parameters set by the Zionists and their imperialist mentors is in danger of suspension or expulsion.

Two weeks ago a retired civil service union activist was informed by Labour’s notorious disciplinary body that he may be in breach of the rules for the heinous crime of arguing “in favour of masturbation in workplaces” on Facebook.

The fact that he wasn’t even a member of the Labour Party when this online discussion took place makes it even more absurd. Like tens of thousands of others this former supporter of a minor Trotskyist faction only joined Labour in July 2016, in order to support Jeremy Corbyn in the face of yet another coup attempt. That, of course, is why he was targeted in the first place.

Robust debate may be part and parcel of the traditions of our labour movement but it can only work both ways. If it’s okay for Mrs Hodge to get off with a minor reprimand for abusing the Labour leader in public then the same standards should be applied to Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and all the other left Labour activists hounded out of the party by the Blairites and the Zionist lobby over the past three years.

Their ‘crime’ was challenging Zionist dogma and standing up for Palestinian rights within the Labour Party. They have the full support of the communist movement.

Lenin exposed the reactionary essence of Zionism, emphasising that its dogmas are reactionary, false and contrary to the interests of the Jewish proletariat. He criticised the Zionists’ theses concerning the unique nature of the Jewish people, the alleged absence of class differences amongst the Jews, and the imaginary communality of their interests, explaining that such assertions aimed to distract Jewish workers from the proletariat’s common class struggle. The Zionists and Blairites have peddled their reactionary nonsense within the Labour party for far too long. We must challenge them head-on throughout the labour movement.