What follows are my notes for a talk to the Jewish Socialists' Group this afternoon, which looks at the sensitive issue of Jewish financial support for the Labour Party. As such, the piece hasn't been polished up to publication standard. And check against delivery, as the top politicians say.
Thanks for inviting me to speak at your meeting. My name is David Osler, I’m a journalist and author and here today I think mainly because a few years ago I wrote a book called Labour Party plc.
It’s about the development of the Labour Party from what used to be called - in Marxist jargon - ‘a bourgeois workers’ party’ dependent on the trade unions for 90% of its funding to its current reliance on large cheques from the more unsavoury elements of the business community.
Although the book was published in 2002, this is an issue that just hasn’t gone away. Even over the last year, we’ve had the abortive Scotland Yard inquiry into cash for honours allegations, the David Abrahams affair of course, and just this week the resignation of a cabinet minister who somehow ‘overlooked’ his responsibility to declare over £100,000 of donations to his campaign for the Labour deputy leadership. So it’s as topical as ever.
Mostly I found writing the book a straightforward process; one of the few areas that presented me with any cause for concern was the indisputable fact that, at certain stages of the story, Jewish people figure prominently and probably disproportionately.
I was worried that tackling this issue would set me up for misrepresentation. It seems to dovetail with all the familiar anti-semitic tropes about - in quotes - ‘Jewish money men’. And indeed, the book has been quoted by far right websites and Arab newspapers to precisely that effect.
But ultimately I took the decision that if you are writing a serious political book for a grown-up readership, the only option is to tackle this question head on. Anything less would have been intellectually dishonest.
Historically it has manifestly been the case that a considerable proportion of Labour’s business support base - which has always been there, albeit obviously nowhere near as substantial has today - has been Jewish.
There is no need to resort to anti-semitic conspiracy theory to explain this. Large sections of the Jewish community - historically speaking, anyway - in both Britain and the US has tended towards the left. Moreover, many Jews who have succeeded in business been working class lads and lasses made good.
So even in the 1960s, one of Wilson’s closest associates was Lord Kagan, a Litvak émigré raincoat manufacturer to whom he gave a peerage. Kagan was subsequently jailed for corruption.
And of course, one of the Labour MPs of this period was a certain Robert Maxwell, a Czech Jew who went on to own Mirror Group Newspapers; in 1991, he met his death by jumping off his yacht, rather than face the music for defrauding MGN pension funds of over £400m.
1972 saw the formation of the Labour Finance and Industry Group, originally based on around a dozen Labour-supporting businessmen; it offered Wilson informal advice on industrial policy and continued to play an important role under Callaghan.
LFIG - which still operates today - was essentially an extension of the Kagan network. Leading lights include honorary life president Lord Haskel, another Litvak who is president of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research; Sir Sigmund Sternberg and Lord Gregson. Vice-chairman - their choice of designation - include the economist Stephen Gruneberg and Danny Bernstein of Monarch Airlines.
A fair few peers and knights, you’ll notice. Several of these men are known donors to the Labour Party; and it would be unsurprising if others gave money in the 1970s and 1980s, when donations did not have to be declared.
Move the story on now to the 1990s and the so-called blind trust system of fundraising that Labour then employed. The were essentially secret conduits that the rich could give money to, on the understanding that it would be passed on to leading Labour politicians. Beneficiaries of the system included John Smith, Margaret Beckett, Robin Cook and John Prescott.
But most media attention focused on a Sunday Times story from November 1996, outlining the workings of the Labour Leader’s Office Fund, which helped pick up the bills for Tony Blair.
Acting in the role of bagman was Michael Levy (pictured), an East End Jewish music business impresario who inflicted Alvin Stardust and Bad Manners on the nation’s youth back in my teenage years. After selling his record company for £10m, and was then devoting most of his time to fundraising for Jewish charities.
Following a meeting with Blair at a dinner party hosted by Gideon Meir, he began tapping the same milieu, effectively allowing the man who was by then very obviously Britain’s next prime minister to run a sizeable political operation independently of the Labour Party itself.
The Sunday Times named four prominent businessmen as backers of the Labour Leaders’ Office Fund. All four were Jewish, something that did not escape either the Jerusalem Post of the British National Party.
The backers included the late Sir Emmanuel Kaye, founder of industrial vehicles manufacturer Lansing Bagnall, previously known to have funded the Tories; Sir Trevor Chinn, who built up the Lex chain of garages and car showrooms, and who was knighted by Margaret Thatcher; printing millionaire Bob Gavron, now Lord Gavron of course and former husband of London deputy mayor Nicky Gavron; and Granada Television's Alex Bernstein. The Conservatives alleged that Maurice Hatter, chairman of IMO Precision Controls, also gave to the trust.
There are further Jewish connections. The trust's books were handled by London accountants Blick Rothenberg, which also looks after many major Israeli companies operating in Britain.
In other words, the financial support of a layer of individual wealthy Jews was instrumental in providing the independent means necessary for the Blair project to by-pass official Labour Party structures.
The subsequent results of this development included Levy - an avowed Zionist - becoming Britain’s de facto minister for the Middle East, and more recently, the appointment of Blair as Middle East envoy.
But it is crucial to stress that there is no need to resort to conspiracy theory to explain all this. As one source with close knowledge of Labour Party funding in the period told me:
The nexus is not sinister. It is probably the social relations that surround a particular reform synagogue in North London. If you crack that congregational network, you have probably cracked much of the cross-linkage. It may explain some of the anomalies in the fundraising and the unexpected sources of funds traditionally associated with the Tories.
Let’s also note that Labour is not the only beneficiary of Jewish financial support. Tory leader David Cameron’s Jewish supporters include casino boss Lord Steinberg; media executive Michael Green; Simon Wolfson, chief executive of the Next clothing retail chain; and Andrew Feldman, owner of the Jayroma clothing company. The latter is an old Oxford friend of Cameron, and reportedly does a job similar to the one Levy used to undertake for Blair.
So what are the political implications of all this? Are we seeing the emergence in Britain of something akin to the Jewish Lobby in the US, as recently detailed by the new book from Mearsheimer and Walt? Is Jewish support for British politicians influencing British foreign policy?
Sadly for the wingnut brigade, I don’t think there’s any concrete evidence for such assertions. British foreign policy is largely dictated from Washington, and would tend to be pro-Israeli anyway, irrespective of factors such as those outlined above.
Ultimately, I don’t think the issues raised are distinct from those raised by political donations in Britain generally. There is a suspicious correlation between writing six-figure cheques to a political party and receipt of an honour.
Although Lord Levy has ’emerged without stain on his character’ - as the euphemism has it - he might just as well have been flogging ermine off a barrow in Ridley Road market. It really was that blatant, and I do think the democratic left should push the demand for clean politics. After all, if we don’t do it, who on earth will?
Posted at 13:18, 27 January 2008
Comments (16)
The left should definitely push for financial transparency and clean politics, because if we don't, our enemies will seek to come up with "solutions" that would make life more difficult for our kind of politics.
Here's a piece I wrote for my blog about the CPS's recent offensive against trade union political funds. Union Futures has also written a similar piece:
Tories Target Trade Union Political Funds
The Centre for Policy Studies was founded in 1974 by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph. Since then it has become an ideas factory for neo-liberal policy formation and trades in the rhetoric of free markets, deregulation, slashing red tape, competitiveness, flexibility ... all those New Right buzzwords we've come to learn and loathe over the last 30 years. Strange how no one talks about trickle down any more.
Their latest pamphlet on political funding, Labour and the Trade Unions: An Analysis of a Symbiotic Relationship is straight out of the CPS mould. The first point of its summary reads
"The Labour Government has, since 1997, made much of its "business friendly" credentials. However, study of its employment legislation and its relaxation of Trade Union regulation shows that, in reality, employers have been faced with significant extra burdens and that the rights enjoyed by Trade Unions have been greatly strengthened."
You might be tempted to ask "what planet are they on?" Even the dogs in the street know New Labour is the most right-wing anti-working class Labour government in British history. Only people with a visceral hatred for the labour movement, combined with a relationship to the class struggle mediated by The Telegraph and working lunches with corporate "risk-takers" could believe otherwise. The credited authors of this piece are Alan Duncan, Tory shadow for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and Jonathan Djongoly, his deputy. But all of us who care about the labour movement would do well to pay attention to their recommendations. If the Tories get back in after the next election (did they ever leave?), these suggestions could well form the basis of their political funding/anti-trades union legislation.
It is worth quoting Duncan and Djongoly's most important recommendations at length. These belong to a set of positions specifically addressing union political funds and political donations:
* Unions' members should vote annually on maintaining a political fund.
* A Union's members should be required to vote on the level of the political levy annually.
* The political fund opt-out right should be clearly stated on Trade Union membership application forms or a specific opt-in introduced.
* The opt-out right should be offered annually to each union member.
* Union members who do wish to contribute to the political fund should be able to decide either directly as individuals or collectively via a members' vote to which party/parties/causes their funds should be put.
* The accounting reporting requirements of Unions should be reviewed - particularly with a view towards improving transparency.
All this, the authors claim, means unions would be "subject to similar levels of transparency and democracy as apply to companies and individuals". Physicians, heal thyselves! Anyone remember the £550,000 allegedly given to the Tories on the quiet by Wafic Said, the billionaire intermediary who greased the wheels of the infamous British Aerospace fighter deal with the Saudi despots? Yes, everything was so very above board then.
Let there be no doubt about this. There is nothing wrong with demanding financial transparency in labour movement organisations. Trade union members have every right to know where our money is going, be it to the political party that time and again kicks our class in the teeth, or into cushions padding the comfy chairs of many a general secretary. Neither is there anything wrong with democratising political funds. But these Tory proposals have nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with reinforcing the power of capital over labour. If implemented, there are likely to be two sets of consequences:
1) Trade union funding to Labour will be severely curtailed. According to Electoral Commission figures cited in the document, £55.5 million flowed from the unions into the party's coffers in the 2001-2006 period, 65.1% of all monies received. The Tories assume if their proposals become law, the majority will either opt out of paying a political levy and/or some unions could drop their affiliation. Either way, less trade union money will be heading in Labour's direction and make it more dependent on business backers than ever before. This gives the Tories more of an advantage when it comes to campaigning - their organic links to British capital ensures their ability to massively outspend Labour. Given the character of the Labour party at present, some might justifiably say "so what?" It isn't as if New Labour hasn't spent the last 11 years grovelling before business interests. But the danger this could pose to Labour party funding will also apply to any future new workers' party with trade union backing. Effectively, it seeks to lock working class people out of political participation.
2) The proposed measures on annual political levy level votes, maintenance of the fund, destination of the levies, and the annual opt-out reminder comes on top of the continued becalming affects of existing anti-trade union legislation. As bureaucracies have mushroomed to ensure compliance with a superabundance of Byzantine regulations and technicalities, resources will have to be found to run permanent departments attending to the Tories' rules. More bureaucracy = more conservatising pressures on the trade unions and less money for front line activities.
What can be done? A strategy solely concerned with keeping the Tories out is a non-starter. At the moment, choosing between Labour and Conservative governments is the difference between neo-liberalism with a smile and a smirk, and a neo-liberalism openly contemptuous of working class people. Labour's opposition to meddling with the union link will last as long as it takes to sort out party funding from the public purse. They too seek to exclude ordinary people from mainstream politics. "Nationalising" parties make them less amenable to the pressures of membership, of the activists who theoretically act as a bridge between the general public and the full time apparatus and leadership of a party. The Tory proposals amount to the same thing: "privatising" parties by making them more dependent on the grace of wealthy individuals and business entities will do the job just as well.
The best way, the only real way we can head off attacks of this character is for the left to seriously agitate for and win over as many trade unionists as possible to a programme of democratising our movement . This goes hand in hand with making it more relevant, meaningful, and responsive to the needs of our class. We have to wield the weapon of democracy, otherwise our enemies will use its name against us.
What was the reaction to your speech, Dave?
A good and well-researched presentation, Dave. I particularly like your refutation of the various conspiracy theories about "Jewish finance" and "Jewish influence" that have, for years, befouled the British "left".
You don't go into (and I don't blame you), how tyhe term "Zionism" is now habitually used by anti-semites to cover their tracks.
As for your reference to the Mearsheimer and Walt essay (now book) on 'The Lobby': I can thoroughly recommend Walter Russell Mead's critique in the November/december edition of 'Foreign Affairs' journal, which defend them against charges of anti-Semitism, but criticises them for poor research, confused analysis and insensitive use of "certain literary devices" that evoke "unfortunate memories". I've linked to the piece at 'Shiraz Socialist', or anyone interested can google it.
Anyway: well done, Dave! A good and fair effort on a difficult and dangerous subject.
I found Mearsheimer & Walt's thesis mostly solid - certainly not deserving of the 'anti-semitic' label that's been slapped on it. In fact I'd endorse the criticism advanced by (I think) Daniel Davies, that the lobby described by M&W isn't just not essentially 'Jewish', it's not essentially 'Zionist'. In other words, what they're describing isn't primarily the capture of US foreign policy by a Zionist lobby, but the capture of the American Zionist constituency (i.e. most American Jews and a lot of American Christians) by a neo-con lobby.
Jim wrote "I particularly like your refutation of the various conspiracy theories about "Jewish finance" and "Jewish influence" that have, for years, befouled the British "left"."
Care to elaborate? Since when has anyone on the British left been guilty of propagating Jewish conspiracies, financial or otherwise?
Here's one elaboration you thick imbecile twat
Here's another you thick imbecile twat.
"Abstract: After the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, a change took place in Trotskyist positions concerning Jews. The earlier positions saw Jews as one of the oppressed peoples of the world. While the movement has always opposed Zionism, earlier pronouncements routinely coupled this opposition with denunciations of what where seen as anti-Semitic aspects of the Arab nationalist movement. After 1967, most sections of the Trotskyist movement began to characterize the Jews of Israel as an 'oppressor nation' and called for the destruction of Israel. The movement also began to distribute an earlier publication that characterized the Jewish tradition as one of usury."
As I've said before and elsewhere, the extreme state of counter-revolution in the middle east demands that, while maintaining a critical position vis-a-vis nation states everywhere, communists and socialists should, and must, stand in solidarity with Israel, the founding of which is inextricably linked to the climax of European counter-revolution and the defense of which is made necessary by the continuing reactionary modernism of Middle East regimes.
You fucking idiots and swine.
Jeff Weintraub's has an archive of critiques of Mearsheimer and Walt's work:
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/archives/index.php?id=17
AVPS, see http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1600#
and http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1535
fucking hell -- come here Rommel! You bounder! I want to smack you in the chops.
I am sorry but your manoeuvre has been placed in moderation and we may get back to you later!
Did you lot watch the Primo Levi thing on BBC 4 tonight?
Very moving. Excellent it was.
"A Very Public Sociologist" |
A very stupid cunt.
You ignorant piece of shit.
My other shit has links in it and shit -- i am waiting for the Trotskyite Lord himself to give the go-head for the comment to be allowed.
Rommel! Sort it out you fucker!
"In a man to man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine."
"LORD LEVY, Labour’s former chief fundraiser, is refusing to show his memoirs to the Cabinet Office censor, even though the book is expected to contain an attack on Gordon Brown.Levy will publish a “warts and all” account of life as a government and party adviser this autumn.
...Levy had access to the highest reaches of government until Blair’s departure last year and kept detailed notes of his conversations. As well as detailing the ill-tempered arguments between Blair and Brown, Levy may also shed light on the two men’s secret funding arrangements before 1997. Both Blair and Brown benefited from blind trusts that funded their office costs during the days in opposition To this day the full list of businessmen who contributed to the funds has never been revealed.
A confidant of the former fundraiser said: “Michael loved Tony right to the end but he always thought Gordon was strange and antagonistic." ~ Times today.
"WARTS"
I'll take a thorough look when I have the time. Nevertheless I will read it with an extremely critical eye as, in over 12 years of reading left publications, I've never come across anything that could be described as anti-semitic.
Will, grow up.
AVPS
I think there have been some instances of anti-semitism on the left. For example the New Statesmen's "kosher conspiracy" front cover, Tam Dalyell's remarks about a "jewish cabel" running government policy and the SWPs flirtation with Gilad Atzmon.
However, I think that such instances are the exception rather than the norm and both the extent and the nature of "left anti-semitism" have been greatly exaggerated by Zionists and pro imperialists for their own ideological purposes.
As the other speaker at yesterday's meeting, let me say we were very glad to have Dave speak, and it went down very well.
I dealt with the other aspect, of Labour's Zionist Lobby, and having more past than future, with its history. My main point was that sympathy with Zionism goes back a long way in the British Labour movement. Three months before the Balfour Declaration, Labour issued a War Aims memorandum written by Arthur Henderson and Sydney Webb which combined the demand for democratic rights and equal citizenship for Jews wherever they lived with a call for Palestine to be freed from the Turks so it could provide a homeland for Jews to "return". Thus two
ideas were linked - the Jewish aspiration for freedom and what had long been a Christian idea, before political Zionism, of a Jewish "Return".
Of course it was becoming part of British policy at the time.
Beatrice Webb, whose descriptions of East End poverty and sweatshops have been seen as inclined to antisemitism was much more positive about the Zionist project in Palestine. The Fabians shared Rhodes idea of solving social problems in Europe by sending people to settle and develop other lands. So there you have anothe strand.
To skip a long story (maybe I'll write an article
as I did once before), including the time when Ernest Bevin got on very well with the London rep of the Histadrut and promised the votes of TGWU sponsored MPs, or the 1944 NEC report saying Palestine's Arabs should be persuaded to move out,
it never depended on Jewish influence or money.
Also, for a period , because of the Holocaust, most sympathy with Israel was on the Left.
Harold Wilson probably had Britain's Middle East interests in mind when he turned to backing Israel
around 1967. But while there were various reasons
for his links with Jewish businessmen, that had
nothing particularly to do with Israel, it was also notable that one of those funding him -Arieh
Handler - was no Labour man, even in Israeli terms, but was London director of the International Credit Bank of Geneva which acted as
a conduit for clandestine Israeli operations, till the Israeli government fell out with its boss Tibor Rosenbaum, and the bank collapsed. We may never know what was in Wilson's account or what it was for.
Does it matter? Well it did when British Labour
opposed Issam Sartawi speaking at the Socialist International. When this obstruction failed it was left to Abu Nidal to silence Sartawi for good. We in the Jewish Socialists Group had organised meetings for Sartawi and Uri Avnery here.
I won't go on, but one last point we did not get on to - I am wondering if the Reform Synagogue Dave refers to is the one think it is. If so, it's Rabbi is quite a decent chap, and one of the members was nearly Foreign Secretary once - that's Gerald Kaufman, whom I heard speak at the Enough!
lobby on Palestine in November. It must have been
a relief to the Zionist lobby to get Margaret Beckett, who admitted to Arab ambassadors that she knew nothing about the Middle East.
"in over 12 years of reading left publications, I've never come across anything that could be described as anti-semitic."
Maybe you don't consider The Morning Star left wing ?
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1517
A Very Public Soiciologist
I knew some of your comrades in the Militant many years. They were certainly more aware of left antisemitism than you seem to be which is a shame.
You might want to peruse through some of the articles here
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/archives/index.php?id=30