{"id":22024,"date":"2022-08-13T15:54:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-13T15:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=22024"},"modified":"2022-08-13T16:28:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-13T16:28:08","slug":"there-is-only-one-form-of-racism-that-the-gmb-opposes-antisemitism-in-other-words-it-supports-israeli-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2022\/08\/13\/there-is-only-one-form-of-racism-that-the-gmb-opposes-antisemitism-in-other-words-it-supports-israeli-apartheid\/","title":{"rendered":"There is only one form of racism that the GMB opposes \u2013 \u2018antisemitism\u2019 \u2013 in other words it supports Israeli Apartheid"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article first posted by Tony Greenstein<\/a> outlined the hypocrtical stance of the GMB leadership over its attitude to racism, and its consistent backing for Labour’s right wing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

THERE IS ONLY ONE FORM OF RACISM THAT THE GMB OPPOSES – ‘ANTISEMITISM’ – IN OTHER WORDS ISRAELI APARTHEID\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The first time I became aware of the GMB, then the General and Municipal Workers Union, was when I was a young activist in 1970 during the\u00a0<\/a>Pilkington\u2019s strike<\/a>. Pilkingtons manufactured glass in St Helens, a town near Liverpool. The workers went on unofficial strike and the GMWU led by Lord Cooper did its best, in conjunction with the management, to break the strike.<\/p>\n

The official who presided over that act of scabbing was future General Secretary David Basnett. The determination of the strikers who stayed out for 6 weeks without strike pay was a wonder to behold. The GMB has not changed fundamentally since then.<\/p>\n

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Gary Smith, the latest in a line of right-wing GMB General Secretaries<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I knew Gary Smith, the current General Secretary, from when he was a young official in Brighton during the refuse workers\u2019 strike and occupation at Hollingdean Refuse Depot in 2001.<\/a><\/p>\n

I was Secretary of the nearby Brighton and Hove Unemployed Workers Centre and we and our volunteers were called upon by Smith to help the workers win their dispute. We loaned them our computer equipment and our activists helped out for example by lying down on the road and locking on to stop the Council\u2019s attempts to break the strike with scab lorries.<\/a><\/p>\n

The workers won their dispute and as a result the privatisation of refuse collection was ended. SITA were removed and the refuse collection was brought in-house. In other words privatisation was reversed \u2013 something which was pretty unique at the time.<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately the solidarity we showed has never been reciprocated by the GMB, which is a selfish, self-centred, right-wing union.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Smith struck me as an ambitious official. Although he ably supported the strike and occupation he had no wider socialist politics and one can see that today. He is a union bureaucrat who has no criticism of Starmer or the Labour Right. He would be happy to return to the days of New Labour. He hasn\u2019t the foresight or acumen to see that Starmer would be a disaster for workers and all those who are living under a neo-liberal government determined to remove workers\u2019 rights. He has no vision beyond his own perks and privileges.<\/a><\/p>\n

The hypocrisy of Gary Smith who has supported Keir Starmer to the hilt<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The GMB is and always has been a bastion of the Right in the Labour Party. Often little more than a company union it is an unflinching supporter of capitalism within the labour movement. The ideas of workers\u2019 control are alien to it. The GMB has adopted the short-termism of capitalism, with its inability to recognise that the world we live in is being destroyed by the scramble for profit. The GMB supports Trident, nuclear power and fracking.<\/a><\/p>\n

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In theory the GMB supports racial justice and equality<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The GMB and racism<\/strong><\/p>\n

The GMB is also the most racist, sexist and corrupt union with unelected Regional Barons, all men, and a General Secretary who is often not even elected (opponents were prevented from standing by setting the number of branch nominations artificially high).<\/a><\/p>\n

The GMB has never been to the fore, or indeed involved, in any anti-racist campaigns that involved Black or Asian members of its workforce. As a largely White union it was completely absent from anti-fascist campaigns against groups like the National Front and BNP in the 70s and 80s and from campaigns against state racism.<\/a><\/p>\n

There are hardly any articles on its website on\u00a0\u00a0racism. Just\u00a0<\/a>one article<\/a>\u00a0on the launch of its race strand, one\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0on the Grenfell fire despite the involvement of its own members as emergency responders and one\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0on Black Lives Matter. All of them dated.<\/p>\n

There is\u00a0absolutely nothing<\/strong>\u00a0about the participation of the GMB union or its members in anti-racist struggles or campaigns. The GMB has been conspicuous by its absence from campaigns such as that of Stephen Lawrence.<\/p>\n

The same is true of international issues. On Palestine there is\u00a0one article<\/a>\u00a0welcoming a Supreme Court decision that went in favour of the right of pension funds to boycott unethical investments and a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0on Western Sahara and Palestine. That is it.<\/p>\n

There is nothing on BDS, nothing criticising Israeli Apartheid, nothing about the union giving concrete support to the Palestinians such as sending delegations to Palestine besides a token affiliation to Palestine Solidarity Campaign.<\/p>\n

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In theory the GMB supports racial justice and equality<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GMB Supports the Racist Jewish Labour Movement\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

However there is one form of \u2018racism\u2019 that the GMB is most concerned about. Yes that\u2019s right \u2013 \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019. The very same \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019 that Labour\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>Forde Report<\/a>\u00a0has conceded was weaponised against supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and the left.<\/p>\n

So concerned about non-existent \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019 are the\u00a0GMB that they\u00a0hosted<\/a>\u00a0\u2018the first-ever antisemitism education training for GMB members at Congress\u2019<\/em>. About other forms of racism? Nothing.<\/p>\n

And who did they host it with? The\u00a0Jewish Labour Movement<\/em>, the British wing of the racist\u00a0Israeli Labor Party<\/em>. It\u2019s like hosting a seminar on care for the elderly with Harold Shipman as the main guest or a conference on fighting fascism with Nick Griffin.<\/p>\n

The Israeli Labor Party formed the government of Israel from 1948-1977. In 1948 they massacred and expelled \u00be million Palestinian refugees and for 18 of those years kept Israeli Arabs under military rule, confined to their villages whilst confiscating most of their land. 93% of Israel was barred to them. It was the ILP that began the colonisation of the West Bank. This is the party that the JLM calls its \u2018sister party<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

The ILP\u2019s former leader Isaac Herzog, now Israel\u2019s President,\u00a0declared that his\u00a0nightmare<\/a>\u00a0was waking up to find that Israel had a Palestinian Prime Minister and 61 Palestinian Members of Israel\u2019s Knesset. Herzog declared that he wanted to\u00a0dispel the impression<\/a>\u00a0that the ILP were \u2018Arab Lovers\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Imagine that someone were to say that their fear was that Britain might have a Jewish Prime Minister or that the Labour Party was not a \u2018Jew lovers\u2019<\/em>\u00a0party. The term\u00a0\u2018Jew lover\u2019<\/em>\u00a0and \u2018Nigger lover\u2019<\/em>\u00a0used to be part of the language of the National Front but in a \u2018Jewish\u2019 state such language is common.<\/p>\n

Herzog responded to Netanyahu\u2019s attempt to expel Black African refugees from Israel, whose only crime was being Black and not Jewish, by criticising him for not being tough enough!\u00a0Herzog\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that Eritreans in Israel were not refugees but \u2018infiltrators\u2019 (it is what the Palestinian refugees used to be called in 1948 onwards, despite them being the indigenous population).<\/p>\n

In September 2015, the ILP complained that Netanyahu\u2019s government has not done enough to expel African refugees. Herzog\u2019s Labor Party adopted the far-right\u2019s propaganda points,\u00a0insisting<\/a>\u00a0that most refugees in Israel have no valid claim to refugee status.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIf only Bibi\u2019s government had created immigration laws, it would be possible to send back to their country those who are in Israel for their welfare and for work. But the Likud government is only good at talking, and it is responsible for the troubles of the residents of south Tel Aviv.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017 the ILP\u00a0led a successful effort<\/a>\u00a0to abolish the Knesset\u2019s committee on foreign workers, one of the few forums in which the concerns of refugees could receive a hearing in parliament.<\/p>\n

Today the ILP and its 7 MKs are\u00a0in government<\/a>\u00a0with Israel\u2019s far-right. Labour\u2019s Security Minister Omar Barlev, gave last May permission for thousands of settlers to march through Arab East Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day, in an assertion of Jewish supremacy. This was the same as the Loyalist marches in Catholic areas of Northern Ireland. What followed was a veritable pogrom. Hundreds of Palestinians were attacked by mobs chanting \u2018death to the Arabs<\/em>\u2019. It was not as if Barlev had not been warned.<\/p>\n

The liberal\u00a0Ha\u2019aretz<\/em>, in an Editorial was\u00a0scathing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bar-Lev decided that the defiant nationalist\u00a0Flag March in Jerusalem<\/a>\u00a0will once again pass through Damascus Gate and the Muslim Quarter. Thus he has proven not only the weakness of his stand, but also that he sees himself as public security minister for Jews only. The fate of the Palestinians, their well-being, security and dignity, interests him not at all; he permits them to be trampled on, and perhaps even encourages it.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0Bar-Lev\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>point of view, there are no residents in Jerusalem except the Jews for whose well-being he is responsible.<\/p>\n

This is the JLM\u2019s\u00a0\u2018sister party\u2019<\/a>. For the GMB to ally itself with the JLM is an endorsement of Israel\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0racist treatment of the Palestinians and makes itself complicit in that treatment.<\/p>\n

The JLM, formerly Poale Zion, has never been interested in fighting genuine anti-Semitism. In the 1930s when anti-Semitism was at its height in Britain, with Oswald Moseley\u2019s British Union of Fascists regularly attacking Britain\u2019s Jews, over 200,000 workers took to the streets of the East End to stop the fascists marching through the East End in what became known as the\u00a0Battle of Cable Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle\u00a0told Jews<\/a>\u00a0to stay at home and avoid the fascists. Britain\u2019s Zionists were opposed to any physical confrontation. Poale Zion played no part in the mobilisation against the fascists because it was a right-wing middle class affiliate of the Labour Party. Jewish workers supported the Communist Party or Independent Labour Party. They were not Zionists.<\/p>\n

Exactly the same happened in the 1970s with the National Front. The Zionists played no part in opposing them. The only \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019 that the Board and the JLM are concerned about is opposition to Israel and Zionism. The GMB\u2019s racist leadership are fully aware of this.<\/p>\n

The Zionist movement has never fought anti-Semitism. The Zionist movement was formed because it rejected the fight against anti-Semitism which they saw as inherent in every Gentile. As Theodor Herzl, its founder,\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in his Diaries during the Dreyfus Affair:<\/p>\n

In Paris\u2026 I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to \u2018combat\u2019 anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

So when the GMB say they are partnering with the JLM what they are really doing is partnering with Apartheid. They are not \u2018stamping out anti-Semitism\u2019 as they\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0but stabbing Palestinians in the back.<\/p>\n

In the past year virtually all human rights organisations \u2013\u00a0Amnesty International<\/a>,\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>,\u00a0B\u2019Tselem<\/a>,\u00a0Harvard Human Rights Clinic<\/a>\u00a0and the UN\u2019s Special Rapporteur have\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that Israel is an apartheid, Jewish supremacist state. The evidence is overwhelming yet GMB apparatchiks see no problem in working with these racists on Labour\u2019s Right whilst also claiming to support the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

It is\u00a0well known<\/a>\u00a0that you can\u2019t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Yet the corrupt bureaucrats of the GMB\u2019s London Region believe you can lie down with the supporters of Israeli Apartheid and still claim to support the Palestinians. They are encouraged in this by\u00a0Palestine Solidarity Campaign<\/a>, to which the GMB is affiliated, which will not issue one word of criticism of the GMB\u2019s duplicity.<\/p>\n

GMB officers are notorious for their stupidity but even the stupidest bureaucrat should realise that \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019 in the Labour Party was confected. There was no such phenomenon. The fact that Starmer\u2019s fight against \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019 has resulted in Jews being expelled from Labour at\u00a05 times the rate<\/a>\u00a0of non-Jews should surely make it clear to even the dimmest official that the issue was always Israel not Jews.<\/p>\n

The GMB\u2019s London Region\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0that anti-Semites should face the \u2018full force of the law\u2019\u00a0<\/em>but has nothing to say about the Windrush deportations, attacks on Mosques, Islamaphobia, the Rwandan Scheme, deaths in police custody etc. But when it comes to the most privileged and prosperous section of the White community, Jews, the GMB suddenly becomes anti-racist. This is in itself a demonstration of the racism running through the GMB.<\/p>\n

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Driving whilst black<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

British Jews do not experience anti-Semitism except as prejudice. There is no state anti-Semitism. There is no offence of \u2018driving whilst Jewish\u2019 whereas Black drivers get\u00a0<\/a>regularly<\/a>\u00a0stopped. There was no Jewish Windrush Scandal or a Jewish Stephen Lawrence. It is\u00a0mosques<\/a>\u00a0like Finsbury Park, not synagogues, which are attacked. That is why anti-Semitism is confected and why Tory racists like Boris\u00a0\u2018watermelon smiles\u2019<\/a>\u00a0Johnson included, are happy to\u00a0condemn<\/a>\u00a0\u2018anti-Semitism\u2019, when it relates to Israel,\u00a0even whilst they harbour<\/a>\u00a0anti-Semitic sentiments.<\/p>\n

In May 2021 there was a small pro-Israel demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy. Who turned up? British fascist,\u00a0Tommy Robinson<\/a>. Even the most stupid GMB bureaucrat, even Gary Smith, should be able to understand that it is the anti-Semitic far-Right who are Israel\u2019s most vociferous supporters and ask themselves why that is the case.<\/p>\n

The same is true in the United States. The organiser of the Charlottesville demonstration and founder of the alt-Right, neo-Nazi Richard Spencer describes himself as a\u00a0White Zionist<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Donald Trump, the most pro-Israeli President there has ever been was also anti-Semitic\u00a0telling<\/a>\u00a0Jews that Israel was their \u2018real home\u2019.<\/p>\n

Historically anti-Semites, the Nazis included, loved Zionism because it helped rid them of the Jews in their midst. And the Zionists reciprocated.<\/p>\n

The JLM has never fought or opposed genuine anti-Semitism. It only seeks to equate anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinians with anti-Semitism. It tried to outlaw using the word \u2018Zionist\u2019 saying it was\u00a0an abusive term<\/a>. Perhaps we should refrain from using the term \u2018racist\u2019 in case it offends racists?<\/p>\n

Mike Katz, Chair of the JLM\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0that under Gary Smith,<\/p>\n

the GMB practice what they preach. It was a privilege to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our trade union allies who are committed to fighting antisemitism.<\/p>\n

Whatever Gary Smith and the GMB have been fighting it\u2019s not anti-Semitism.\u00a0\u00a0It is the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. It was no accident that when Smith, formerly Scottish Regional Secretary was elected, the Labour right\u00a0cheered<\/a>\u00a0the result.<\/p>\n

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The Monaghan Report into Sexual Harassment in the GMB<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In June 2021 Smith succeeded Tim Roache, who resigned after a series of allegations of sexual assault, including rape, were made against him. All of which he denied. Roache resigned on grounds of \u2018ill health\u2019. The seriousness of the allegations made against Roache and others, resulted in an Inquiry under Karon Monaghan QC. It\u00a0<\/a>reported<\/a>\u00a0on 31 August 2020 and it made grim reading. It found that:<\/p>\n

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