28 September 2019|Sputnik International|Mohamed Elmaazi with Eugene Puryear and Bob Schlehuber
Mohamed Elmaazi joined Eugene Puryar and Bob Schlehuber to discuss some of the more significant developments to come out of the Labour Party Conference, just completed in the coastal city of Brighton, England. This includes the historic pledges to adopt humane polices towards immigrants, reversing – in many ways – decades long hostility and racism directed by segments of the UK labour movement towards immigrants and people of colour.
Featured image via Mohamed Elmaazi
On 27 September 2019 (broadcast 28 September) Mohamed Elmaazi joined Eugene Puryar and Bob Schlehuber on their show By Any Means Necessary to discuss some of the more significant developments to come out of the UK Labour Party Conference.
They discussed the historic immigration vote which included a pledge to abolish detention centres and to grant the right to vote to all UK residents, which Elmaazi recently detailed for The Canary, as well as the party’s official polices on Brexit and the Palestinian Right of Return.
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2019_09_28_By Any Means Necessary Labour Party Conference_1
Below is a rush transcript of the discussion edited slightly for clarity:
Eugene Puryar: (00:00)
And we are turning our attention to the United Kingdom and certainly quite a bit going on there. Much of it related to Brexit. Very happy to be joined as we continue our conversation here by Mohamed Elmaazi, who’s a writer and editor of The Interregnum. Mohamed, thank you so much for being with us here on the show.
Mohamed Elmaazi: (00:16)
Thank you for having me.
Eugen Puryar: (00:17)
Well, you know, coming off the Labor Party conference, a number of people, saying Jeremy Corbyn’s speech there was his best that he’d given in some time. A lot of questions over when or where there could be a general election, over whether or not there could be some sort of unity government that could replace Boris Johnson through a vote of no confidence. But that seems to be hung up on the issue of, Jeremy Corbyn being the head of said, unity government, which many people, not many, but some seem to be opposed to, in various parties. So, I mean, I’m curious where you think this thing stands here now in terms of where Brexit is. I mean it does feel that there’s almost a bit of a stasis in the positions on the various sides of the current moment.
Mohamed Elmaazi: (01:01)
There is. When I was at the conference, there was a very big push to get the Labor Party to officially endorsed, remain as its position. And people did push for that and I did interview people who were in favour of that. You could see the, the numbers in terms of those demonstrating in Brighton, uh, which is, you know, near the beach, were definitely in favour of that. However, in the end, the votes, uh, at the Labor Party conference, I ended up going the way that the national executive committee ended up, uh, pushing arguing for which is that the Labor party officially will remain neutral on the matter of Brexit.
Although individual members can, can make their individual visual positions known. So somebody can say if they’re asked, ‘yes, I support to remain or I support, leaving’. But as a party that is now [the] official Labor Party position – Is that the party will remain neutral and that if they’re in government, they’ll offer a both positions and argue and present the cases for both remain and for exit. And for obvious strategic reasons because while the majority of the Labor Party membership maybe in favour of remain, it does seem clear that the majority of the electorate within the areas of that the Labour Party seeks to secure voted leave. So you have a bit of a contradiction there that needs to be resolved, or perhaps can’t be resolved other than what’s been done thus far.
Eugene Puryar: (02:36)
Yeah, no, I mean I think that’s a, you know, a very prescient point. I mean, it does feel like labor is in a, in a tricky situation given the, the way the banks have sort of cut across issues at the conference. I mean, it seems to me that also a as well in, in certainly a theme of, of Corbyn, you know, prior to the conference and also in the conference itself is trying to reorient the sort of political discussion to not be strictly around the issue of Brexit, but sort of in or out of the European union to get people thinking about what kind of government can best deliver, on issues of concern.. You know, whether it be transportation, healthcare, worker’s rights and so on and so forth. Then, you know, I’m curious your take on how that sort of view was received and had, how it played out in the labour party conference. And how important do you think that is to the positioning of labour and let’s say an upcoming general election?
Mohamed Elmaazi: (03:28)
I would say that that is, where the strength does lie. In fact, that was very important, where, where you did see unity or people speaking about unity. And that was a term I heard a lot, was over opposition to certain Tory policies or policies of the right-wing government and power, you know, the, the Conservative and Unionist Party, also known as Tories, but also in favour being in favour of specific policies. So, there were a number of policies where whether it’s about, guaranteeing sort of accommodation, so low cost, you know, building low cost housing, public accommodation, tackling climate change, but with investment in green technology for green jobs or of course an article, a subject I wrote about, the sort of historic position on, on, on immigration, which is very, it is historic for this country on the labour movement.
Mohamed Elmaazi: (04:24)
That’s where you find the strongest support. And as multiple observers pointed to me, that’s where they think their strongest, position is. So that, you know, in or out ‘what are we in favour of, what do we support’. And when they push the policies that, separate them not only from the Tories but also from the right-wing of the Labour Party – If you want to call them the Neoliberal branch a say like a that of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, previous prime ministers, when they do that, you find that those particular policies that they argue in favour of tend to be, you know, tend to have quite a fair amount of support […]
Polling shows that the kinds of policies in the Labour Party manifesto, especially when you separate them from labour, if you just say, what do you think of these policies, including nationalisation of railways, nationalisation of utilities and you could argue, well, nationalisation is not really what they want, they want to bring things under more democratic public control, but even when the polling straight-up uses terms, old school language of nationalisation and state control, there’s overwhelming support across not just the country, you know, just England, but the overall kingdom, for nationalisation we’re talking about high sixties, seventies, in some cases, even 80%, you know, keeping the NHS public, is of course the highest. But even the weapons industry, there’s overwhelming support for that to be under, or majority support for that to be under public control rather than in private hands. So that’s one the reasons you see so many attacks, in my opinion, against Corbyn on a personal basis or smears against him and his supporters, is because if people start debating the actual policies, they find that the policies are generally quite popular. And I think we can discuss the historic, immigration vote if you want to in a bit.
Eugene Puryar: (06:14)
Yeah. Well, you know I, certainly, that thing seems relevant, but one thing I definitely wanted to pick up on that you just mentioned in terms of smears against Corbyn, you know many of them I would say at least seem to be centred around the accusations of the so-called crisis in antisemitism in labour. Obviously that was a major issue where it was going to be an in certainly seems to have been at least to some degree an issue there at the Labour Party conference. I’m curious your take, having been there on how that issue was playing, there was the overall issue I know with the Carlos Latif cartoon and different pieces like that, so sort of on the ground there with the rank and file, labour delegates, what seemed to be the reaction to what some have deemed a witch hunt?
Mohamed Elmaazi: (06:54)
So overall that’s not what I saw really dominating the sort of the main delegates there who were representing the various constituent Labour Party delegates that wasn’t really dominating their thoughts in terms of what was going on. There were all kinds of meetings there where absolutely the witch-hunt or what was been described as a witch-hunt was front and centre. So what you have is, you have the main conference. Then you have fringe events which are also officially represented at the main conference, but they’re at the hotel next door to the Centre, the Brighton Centre. Then you have an entire separate parallel group of events organised by people – it’s called The World Transformed, which has a union backing and backing of certain left groups. And then you had, you had to another fringe event, a known as a free speech event, called it a free speech event where people who’ve been expelled or suspended or otherwise marginalised by the Labour Party bureaucracy.
Mohamed Elmaazi (07:49)
Where they were able to speak freely about the witch hunt, about being smeared as antisemites about the path forward for the Labour Party. And bear in mind, many of these people are themselves Jewish. Jackie Walker is both Jewish and black, has received horrendous level of smearing and insults, you know, Asa Winstanley who’s an investigative journalist with Electronic Intifada, has been smeared as being antisemitic. He’s been suspended from the Labour Party under some vague, you know, very sort of vague rules. So in terms of how it plays out, it depends on which sections, where are you were. So I was supposed to attend a book launch, a book discussion about alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party and because of, what we were told, what I was told, threats and abuse and harassment directed towards the staff at the bookstore, they pulled it at the last minute.
And when I asked them about it, I got, when I asked officially, you know, I got a statement saying, ‘no, no, it had nothing to do with harassment or bullying. There just weren’t enough people who booked tickets, et cetera’.
But when I spoke to the authors, they were like, ‘yeah, that’s not at all true. They, they were even told in advance. They were told even a couple of days previously that the event might be cancelled because of the severity of the harassment and the bullying and the threats on Twitter, on email and phone call and in person. And yet they did end up managing to have it next door in a theatre, a theatre next door. So this is what we’ve been seeing is that there’s, there are attacks from those pushing the witch-hunt if you like, and the smears, but there’s also resistance to those attacks.
Mohamed Elmaazi: (09:20)
The one thing I can say is that there was definitely disappointment […with] the [Labour Party] leadership not being more clear that, you know, criticism of Zionism or the state of Israel or even opposition to Zionism, which is a right-wing nationalist ideology that Israel is founded upon, does not make you antisemitic. It’s not an antisemitic in and of itself. And people saying, so are wrong. If Corbyn had perhaps been a bit more clear about that from the get go and consistent, I think that is certainly be better off for some of his, uh, strongest supporters because it’s those who are consistently anti-racist, consistently anti-imperialist, and have been for years, if not decades. They’re the ones who’ve been targeted the most, and yet they’re the ones that you rely upon the most to push forward your agenda because of the ones who, who’ve been around the most, who are politicised the most.
Eugene Puryar: (10:07)
Yeah, no, I think that’s a, that’s a very relevant point in a very important point too, to sort of grasp there in terms of how these issues are, are playing out on a number of different levels. But to swing back around to the points you were making a related to immigration, please continue on that point.
Mohamed Elmaazi (10:20)
Okay. So, there’s been a historic vote. I know you have over there [in the US], you have also conferences, party political conferences in the United States. And then eventually – you don’t call them manifestos there, but you do have your sort of party pledges, as they were, aren’t they?
Eugen ZZZ: Party platforms, yes
Mohamed Elmaazi: [cross talk] Party platfoms, Yeah.
Here they’re a bit more significant. Like people remember what’s in the, the, manifestos here, right? And when they get broken that, that’s significant. So if you become a, when the Liberal Democrats were in governments, coalition government with the Tories and they had a party pledge to abolish tuition fees for university and then they ended up uh, increasing them, I think even doubling them when they were in government that hurt them, that hurt them massively because a big part of their support came from young people.
Mohamed Elmaazi: (11:10)
So that’s just to give you an image, an idea of how significant it is. So to give you an I’ll just summarise some of the key things that Labor will include in its manifesto pledges to:
- Campaign for free movement, equality, and rights for migrants.
- Reject any immigration system based on incomes, migrants’ utility to business, and number caps/targets.
- Close all [immigration] detention centres.
- Ensure unconditional right to family reunion.
- Maintain and extend free movement rights.
- End “No recourse to public funds” policies.
So that’s on people’s visas. You could have a visa, a work visa, and it might say ‘no recourse to public’ funds even though you pay into a public funds when you pay taxes, when you contribute, there’s something called a national insurance tax contribution, which comes out of your salary, which is supposed to be there for unemployment insurance so that if you become unemployed, you claim from that.
But you can’t do that if you’ve got ‘no recourse to public funds’.
- Scrap all Hostile Environment measures, use of landlords and public service providers as border guards, and restrictions on migrants’ [access to the National Health Service].
- Actively challenge anti-immigration narratives.
- Extend equal rights to vote to all UK residents.
So that would mean if you’re a resident of the United Kingdom, and we’ll see how that might play out, then you should have the equal right to vote. As one person told me, ‘what difference should it make, where you come from or what nationality you have? If you live here and you contribute to the society, does it make sense for you to be disenfranchised?’
This is by far and away the most radical sets of pledges, sets of positions, policies that either the Labor Party or the labor movement in this country has ever had.
Mohamed Elmaazi: (12:54)
It passed unanimously, right? So when I was there and I was filming there you have, you know, all those in favour people raise their hand. All those opposed, I didn’t see one hand go up opposed. And even the chair at the time, counting the votes said this passed unanimously by unanimous vote. So that is just to give you an idea, you know, unions sometimes were at the forefront of being anti immigrant in this country.
So can I give you a quote from one person?
Eugene Puryar: Please.
Mohamed Elmaazi:
A report in 1986:
“History shows the records of the trade union movement to be characterised at worst by appalling racism and often by an indefensible neglect of the issues of race and equal opportunity.”
This is from John wrench, at the time a professor at the university of Warwick.
“The uncomfortable fact remains that some of the most notorious cases of union hypocrisy and racism have occurred since the second world war.”
Mohamed Elmaazi: (13:49)
And then they list a whole series of things of like complicity with shop stewards who were bigoted, not supporting black workers who went on strike because of racism levied by white workers. This is from, this was from the top down of unions. And that while there was degree of tolerance of black. And so called “coloured workers” during the war years, during the first world war, second world war. This was understood to be a temporary situation. And after the first world war workers found themselves being sacked from everything, from [the] docks to sugar refineries, et cetera.
So, when you go from that situation and even under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who pushed immigration camps, who spoke of British jobs for British workers, English jobs for English workers, if you like. So, uh, that’s quite a shift actually.
Jorge Martin from Socialist Appeal, as he said to me, he put it this way, he said:
“within the Labor Party and the labor movement, there have always been two, a socialist one and a reformist one on matters like immigration, racism, imperialism, wars, etc.
They’ve always been on opposite sides of the fence. The motion on immigration is part of the transformation of the Labor Party under Corbyn. And a move away from Ed Miliband’s mugs from Gordon Brown’s, ‘we must celebrate the empire’ from Blair’s imperialist Wars.”
And I have to say that if you look at how things were previously to where they are now, they’re not perfect but it is quite a substantial change, it’s almost 180 degrees, especially if you consider the kinds of things that I was reading to you earlier, the quotes.
Eugene Puryar: (15:27)
No, absolutely. It seems like a quite the change in, in certainly more for the better at. And you know, one other issue that, I saw there that seemed to get some support that I’m curious your thoughts about was the issue of the right of return for Palestine.
MOHAMED ELMAAZI: (15:42)
Absolutely. There is a recognition, because of Britain’s role as a colonial power and facilitating the destruction of historic Palestine, and its colonisation by, settler colonialists ethno-nationalists known as Zionists from Europe, primarily from Europe at the time. So the motion recognised that special position. They didn’t use the language of settler-colonialism. I don’t think, and ethno-nationalism. That’s me describing what Zionism is – and yeah, they recognise the right, the Palestinian Right of Return. Which on the face of it you’d say, ‘well, big deal that’s enshrined under international law. The [UN] Security Counsel repeatedly recognise that of course Palestinians have the Right of Return, you know, Resolution 242, et cetera. You know, clearly states, international law states ‘people made refugees have the right to return to their homeland’, right. But the Labour Party also not only having its own history and its contradictions in terms of racism and being anti-immigrant, anti-black at times, it also has its connections to the origins to Zionism, to political Zionism, and for various reasons (16:47) the Labour Party has historic connections to Zionist movement that ended up colonising destroying historic Palestine and founding the state of Israel. So a going back to its origins. So for them to, for the party as a whole to recognise by [an] overwhelming vote that the right of Palestinians to return to their, to their Homeland, including within… that would imply within […] within the state of Israel. Now what is Israel? That’s quite a shift and that also goes to show that however successful the witch-hunt, which has smeared Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters or some of his supporters as being antisemitic, um, however successful it may have been and resulting in certain people being suspended unfairly or expelled unfairly or sidelined unfairly, you still have overwhelming support for the rights of Palestinians. And that was made incredibly clear by this vote.
Eugene Puryar: (17:41)
No, absolutely. Well we’re going to have to leave it there for now. Really appreciate you joining us here on the show. Mohamed. We are going to go to a break here, but after this break we will return here on by any means necessary on radio Sputnik here in Washington DC. So stay with us.