Tower Hamlets: Does Martin Bright Know Something We Don't?

The current Jewish Chronicle has an odd piece of analysis by editor Martin Bright.

"Ken needs to show a profound change" presents the hardly startling argument that Ken Livingstone needs to greatly up his game, dropping his alliance with Islamism, to win back voters who abandoned him in the last Mayoral election.

More curious though, is Bright's analysis of Ken's chum, Lutfur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets. Discussing Ken's appearence at the Mela in Tower Hamlets, Bright states:

"...he appeared alongside the highly divisive Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, who left the Labour Party for Respect, a body which brings together the socialist hard left and the Islamic far right.
Ken has calculated that backing Mr Rahman's brand of Islamism-lite will win him enough support to justify sacrificing the votes of Jewish, gay or more moderate Muslim Londoners."

I don't have any problem with the second sentence - I suspect that is exactly how Ken Livingstone's mind works. But Martin Bright greatly weakens his case by getting into a terrible muddle over Mayor Lutfur. Rahman certainly left the Labour party, but with the block vote of East London Mosque behind him, actually stood as an independent. There was no need for him to join Respect - the section of the mosque vote that had previously gone to Respect rather than Labour would follow him, and the leftists who made up the minority in Respect would follow as soon as they were told Labour's opposition to Rahman was based on Islamophobia. He remains an 'independent' to this day.

As for Bright's description of Respect bringing together the 'socialist hard left and Islamic far right', it is a neat soundbite. Placing some of the actors involved in this process however is slightly harder. Islamist politics in Tower Hamlets may well find individuals on the left on economic issues and the right on social issues (perhaps mirroring Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party more than the very far right)
As for those 'socialists' in Respect, the likes of Carole Swords and Kevin Ovenden long since shelved notions of class to cheerlead Islamist actors full time - be it Hamas and the Palestinian 'resistance' internationally, or East London Mosque locally.

Placing such individuals on the left/right scale is tricky - perhaps the best historical analogy is the old West European Communist parties during the Cold War. If you were a member of the French Communist Party in the 1970s, your job, by and large, was to support the Soviet Union. The role of a non-Muslim member of Respect is to 'support' the Muslim community locally and the ummah internationally.

Is that too nuanced for Martin Bright to understand?

Comments

[Internationalist]

What evidence do you have that Ken lost the 2008 election because of "his alliance with Islamism"?

My understanding is that the main reason he lost the election is that he lost support among higher income voters to Boris.

So are you advising Ken to shore up the social class AB vote by joining your upper middle class white people's crusade against filthy muslim foreigners?

[Benjamin F]

I would be very wary of anything coming from the JC. It is a decidely dishonest newspaper. It's slanted in its news-gathering and its reporting.

On one occasion I wrote an article for them, and they re-edited it, without my permission, so that parts of it said the opposite of what I had originally stated. They then refused to print a correction. After much argument, they agreed to print a letter, in which I explained how the article had been altered - which before publication, they then edited without permission.... I never wrote (nor was asked to write) for them again.

In short the JC has three functions.
1. To encourage British Jewry to identify with the minority of the ruling class within the Jewish community (the North London elite)
2. To encourage British Jewry to aquiesce to an unquestioning support for the revisionist Zionist project (even by promoting active participation, or by encouraging the belief that opposition is pointless, or assists antiSemitism)
3. Like every other corporrate newspaper, to be a medium for selling expensive products to its readers

[Internationalist]

I agree with Benjamin F.

The JC runs hate campaigns against Jews who do not adhere to what the JC regards as the tribal norms, i.e. support for the Zionist project and the ruling elite.

As do the editors and supporters of the Zionist blog, Harry's Place.

[Ray]

If this proves anything at all it's how irrelevant is "left" and "right". A point made clear by Albert Meltzer many moons ago. I bet he never read the JC.

[Paul Stott]

I got the following reply from Martin Bright on Twitter:

@MrPaulStott Mea Culpa. Corrected online and a correction will appear in print this week

Way back in 2000, Bright famously claimed in the Observer that Anarchists planned to rally on May Day on Oxford Street, armed with samurai swords. It was a straight forward police lie, produced to justify repression against protestors. I have raised this on several occasions on forums Bright posts on - (such as Harrys Place) and he has always ignored any request to respond.

I can't help thinking his rapid response and rebuttal here is based less on principle, but on the fact that the UK's Islamists tend to be a rather litigous bunch........