20 April 2024

It’s Not Guilt That Causes Germany to Support Genocide But their Desire to Transfer Guilt for the Holocaust onto the Palestinians

When Germany Attacks Jewish anti-Zionists It is Following in the Footsteps of the Gestapo


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German Police Smash Up Palestine Congress

On the eve of the First World War Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary uttered the immortal phrase that summed up what was to come, when he said

‘The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’



We could well say the same today. Patrick Devlin, a former Law Lord, wrote in his book Trial by Jury (1956) that the jury system was ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives”. That too is under threat from judges like Silas Reid who threatened a jury at the Old Bailey with prosecution if they allowed their consciences to interfere with the verdict. Reid’s action were an echo of the famous case of Bushell’s in 1670, when a jury was imprisoned for 2 days and nights without ‘meat, drink, fire or tobacco’, because they refused to return a guilty verdict.


But it is not only in Britain that the lamp of liberty is in danger of being extinguished. In Germany, a state which 80 years ago was exterminating millions of people it classed as subhuman, 2,500 Police forcibly closed a Palestine Congress in Berlin, banning from the country the former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.

Yanis Varoufakis Describes How He Was Prevented from Speaking at a Palestine Congress in Berlin by Germany’s Police

Germany’s Support for Israel Mirrors Nazi Germany’s Support for Zionism

Today the German state purports to be pro-Jewish but when it comes to Jewish anti-Zionists, the German State is following exactly the same path as the Nazis took 89 years ago. The Nazis too distinguished between Zionists, (good Jews) and anti-Zionists (bad Jews).

On 28 January 1935 Reinhard Heydrich, whom Gerard Reitlinger described as the ‘real engineer of the final solution’ issued a directive:

The activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organisations that are engaged in the occupational restructuring of the Jews … lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership. (These organizations) are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organizations (assimilationists).

This can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews (p.118).

The result was that the activities of Zionist groups were supervised with ‘more benevolence’ than comparable activities by non-Zionist Jewish groups. The Gestapo and the SD (SS Security Service) ‘place(d) no restrictions on Zionist organisations.’ [Herbert Strauss, pp. 352-3., Jewish Emigration from Germany: Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses]

In May 1935 Das Schwarze Korps, the paper of the SS, wrote that:

the Zionists adhere to a strict racial position and by emigrating to Palestine they are helping to build their own Jewish state.... The assimilation-minded Jews deny their race and insist on their loyalty to Germany or claim to be Christians because they have been baptized, in order to subvert National Socialist principles.

On 26 September 1935 in Das Schwarze Korps Heydrich wrote that the German government

Is in agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, Zionism, whose position is based on the recognition of the unity of Jewry throughout the world, and the rejection of all ideas of mixing in. [Francis Nicosia’s Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany].

Heydrich was the Deputy to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and the second most powerful man in Germany to Hitler himself.

Ian Lustick, an Israeli political scientist, described in The Holocaust in Israeli Political Culture, (p.150) how, in the Eichmann Trial

Extraordinary precautions’ were taken to prevent the name of Hans Globke, the closest advisor to Konrad Adenaeur, the German Chancellor, from being made public.

In 1936 Globke, a senior official at the Interior Ministry, wrote a legal commentary on the Nuremberg Laws which became standard in Nazi Germany’s courts. It stipulated that sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans was a crime even if they took place outside Germany. In 1938 he introduced a regulation requiring Jews to take the first names, Israel and Sarah.

In 1941 Globke took part in drawing up an ordinance that stripped Jews in the conquered nations of their citizenship and allowed their possessions to be confiscated. A legal precondition for the Holocaust. ‘Hitler’s former henchman, was true architect of modern Germany’, The Times, 4.3.21.



Globke also played a key role in the development of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Protecting Israeli-German military and financial relations was paramount.[Lustick, fn. 27 p.150] Israel was determined to avoid a little matter like the role of ex-Nazi officials in the new German state coming between Israel and Germany. [ Lars Petersson, Hitler’s Deserters, pp. 123-9]


It is this that explains the strategic and military alliance between Germany and Israel and why Germany is prepared to openly support Israel’s genocide in Gaza, to the extent of joining it at the International Court of Justice. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is merely the pretext for attacking democratic rights in Germany itself.

After all Germany took part in 2 genocides in the last century, so what is a third genocide between friends? Indeed there was a direct link between the first genocide, the extermination of the Herero and Nama people in South-West Africa (Namibia) and the Holocaust.

It is no surprise that Namibia’s anger boiled over when Germany offered to join Israel’s case at the ICJ. It was in Namibia, then a German colony, that Germany’s extermination program became the template for the Holocaust.

Eugen Fischer was the Nazi doctor who helped pioneer eugenics in the Third Reich. As director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology (1927-42) Fischer provided the ‘scientific’ rationale for the Nazi’s war of extermination.

On Shark Island in SW Africa Fischer ran medical breeding experiments on the camp’s inmates. Racist ideas developed in the colony were brought back to German institutions along with the Africans’ skulls.

Fischer conducted medical experiments on children born from the rape of African women. His research inspired Adolf Hitler and in the 1930s, Fischer taught his racist theories to Nazi doctors. One of his students, Joseph Mengele, was responsible for the medical experiments in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

In 1939, Fischer declared

When a people wants … to preserve its own nature, it must reject alien racial elements,… The Jew is such an alien and, therefore, when he wants to insinuate himself, he must be warded off.

An organisation named “Commission Number 3” was created by the Nazis to deal with the so-called problem of the “Rhineland Bastards”. This was organised under Eugen Fischer. It was decided that the African-German children would be sterilised under the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.

The programme began in 1937, when local officials were asked to report on all “Rhineland Bastards” under their jurisdiction.

All together, some 400 children of mixed parentage were arrested and sterilised. The Nazis went to great lengths to conceal their sterilisation and abortion programme. See The Holocaust’s forgotten black victims – the‘Rhineland Bastards’

Liberal Jews in Germany referred to the Zionists as ‘volkish’ or racial Jews. In Romania the Zionists were referred to by other Jews as ‘Hitler Juden (Jews)’. So when the modern day German State favours Zionist Jews they understand their ideological affinity

Why Does the German State Favour the Zionists?

The German State never deNazified after the war. In many cases the same civil servants, the same judges and police chiefs continued to play the same role that they had played in Nazi Germany.

Hostility after the war to Germany was very great, given the millions who had died at its hand. With the division of Europe into East and West, it was crucial to NATO and the Western Alliance that West Germany be integrated into the West’s military alliances. At the time there was a vigorous campaign against German  re-armament.

It was through Israel that Germany was rehabilitated and the price it paid was billions in reparations, which were meant for the holocaust survivors but were paid to the Israeli state. Israel stole the reparations together with the Jewish Claims Conference. To this day Israel keeps over a third living in poverty, choosing between heating and eating.

Reparations and Restitution

Yad Vashem, the Israeli state Holocaust museum boasted that West Germany’s government ‘realized that paying reparations would help accelerate West Germany's acceptance by the Western powers.’

Through reparations and direct transfers of weapons Israel paved the way for the integration of West Germany into NATO. But there was a political price. Israel was not to make an issue of the presence of Nazis in Konrad Adenaeur’s government.

Germany and Britain’s Attack on Democratic Rights

On December 20th I was arrested under s.12 Terrorism Act 2000 for having posted, a month before, a tweet supporting Hamas, a proscribed organisation. Although Hamas’s military wing, the Al Quassem Brigades had been proscribed in 2001 its political wing had not been proscribed until 2021.

No justification has ever been given for why this further step had been taken although the Zionist organisations had long been lobbying for it. The government’s explanation was that:

Hamas IDQ was proscribed by the UK in March 2001. At the time it was HM government’s assessment that there was a sufficient distinction between the so called political and military wings of Hamas, such that they should be treated as different organisations, and that only the military wing was concerned in terrorism. The government now assess that the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial. Hamas is a complex but single terrorist organisation.

No indication was given as to what this assessment was or what had changed since 2021. In fact there is no evidence whatsoever that Hamas is a single organisation any more than the IRA was a single organisation between 1969 and its ceasefire.

A Palestine solidarity demonstration in the Potsdamer Platz area, Berlin, October 15, 2023. The police suppressed the demonstration shortly after authorizing it.

See Germany cancels pro-Palestine event, bars entry to Gaza war witness

If Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing had been proscribed along with the IRA then there would have been no Good Friday peace agreement. The ban on Hamas makes it clear that the British government, despite pretending to oppose Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, in practice does the precise opposite.  As the current genocide demonstrates, the real terrorists have always been the Israeli army and government.

Hilary Clinton Admits to Creating Al Qaeda

Hamas has never operated outside Palestine. It was elected, in free and fair elections, by the Palestinian people in 2006. Comparisons with ISIS are nonsense and merely police state rhetoric. If anyone is responsible for ISIS and Al Qaeda it is the United States. There was no ISIS before the invasion of Iraq and there was no Al Qaeda before the West began funding Islamic fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan in order to overthrow the secular pro-Soviet government there.

During the 1980s the Israeli government was instrumental in creating Hamas, for similar reasons. It wanted a Palestinian counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism.

Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. In the mid-80s, Cohen wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. See Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It

Today Hamas is enemy no. 1. ‘Terrorism’ is a term of abuse that one hurls at one’s opponents. It has no intrinsic meaning. As Lord Carrington, Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary admitted ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.’ In other words ‘terrorist’ is a label to stick on your opponents.

The Nazis too labelled their opponents ‘terrorists’ or ‘bandits’. To them the Maquis, the French Resistance, was a terrorist group as were the Partisans and all those who fought against them but the British had no problem at the time allying with them.

That is why Britain’s anti-terrorist legislation is based on a lie. Hamas is no more of a terrorist than any number of groups that the US and Britain has funded when it founded convenient.

Hamas has never operated outside Palestine. Unlike ISIS it did not send operatives to blow people up in Europe such as at the Bataclan massacre in Paris in 2015 which both it and Islamic Jihad condemned.

Prevent & The Use of Anti-Terrorism To Silence Dissent – The Thinking of the Thought Police

The British state has been very adept at exploiting terrorism in order to politically attack their opponents and in particular Muslims. It has laid the basis of Islamaphobia. Prevent was first introduced by the Blair government in 2006 to counter terrorism.

Since the passage of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act July 2015 there has been what is known as the Prevent Duty. Schools, Universities and a wide range of public sector bodies have a legal responsibility to “have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”.

It is based on the bonkers idea, which the Police have adopted wholesale, that non-violent ‘extremism’ is the conveyor belt to terrorism. It is bonkers because there is no proof of this theory and because the causes of terrorism are self evident. Little things like America and Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq that MPs voted for and Blair lied for with the story of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Terrorism has causes and they are down to the fact that Western imperialism insists on invading, bombing and destabilising countries in the Global South in order that they can extract their wealth.

In Libya a country under the unified government of Muammar Ghadaffi was bombed by NATO countries and the result was a failed state which included ISIS and a refugee crisis.

The same happened in Syria where the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar funded and supplied weapons to a host of Jihadi groups in their efforts to overthrow the Assad regime. Not surprisingly this gave ISIS a headstart and as in Afghanistan, the West’s Frankenstein turned against them. This is what creates terrorism not radicalisation.

Prevent operates on the basis that people are ‘radicalised’ by ‘extreme’ views and then are susceptible to recruitment by terrorists. No proof has ever been found to back up this nonsense. If anything Prevent is likely to create the very problem it’s designed to overcome.

It is no accident that the vast majority of people targeted by Prevent are Muslims and that support for Palestine is one of the indicators that someone is susceptible to being drawn to terrorism.

When I was remanded in Birmingham prison for a week in 2021, after having been arrested going on a Palestine Action outing, I was asked at the prison reception whether I was an ‘extremist’.  I asked her if she knew what an ‘extremist’ was and she confessed she didn’t.

I then explained that all those who fight for their freedom and democratic rights are called extremists and I gave as an example the Suffragettes who were called ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’. Today they have plaques in the House of Commons and statues commemorating them but in their time they were vilified by people like Churchill.

Next thing I know, the Jewish Chronicle said I was comparing myself to the Suffragettes.  Some people just don’t get it.

Last Thursday I went to court challenging the Police seizure of my computer and electronic equipment. Although most of it has no value to the Police they insist on hanging on to it.

I brought an action under s.1 of the Police Property Act 1897. The matter was adjourned to a later date. For the hearing the Police officer in charge of my case, Chris Beckford from the Anti-Terrorist Police prepared a witness statement. It was very interesting and gives a good insight into the mentality of Britain’s Thought Police.

In his statement Beckford stated on page 2, paragraph 7 that:

It is important to the investigation that we fully understand Mr Greenstein’s mind set and ideology. This not only comes from public sources, ie his blog and social media, but from his internet search history and communication with others. How, and indeed if, he talks about Hamas with others away from the public domain provides highly relevant insight into Mr Greenstein. (my emphasis)

This isn’t ‘anti-terrorism’ it is the thought police. An insight into someone’s mindset and how they think. Not once in the course of two interviews lasting about 2.5 hours was I asked about any bombs I had made or planted.

The only questions related to articles on my blog or a speech I made at Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27. Counter-terrorism has become the policing of peoples’ minds and what they can say. And there are still fools, knaves and liars like Starmer and Sunak who pretend that this has something to do with peoples’ safety when it is about restricting what we are and are not allowed to say.

In the final paragraph of his witness statement Beckford wrote that:

The return of the property to Mr Greenstein at this stage would be prejudicial and compromising to the investigation as to whether he supports a proscribed terrorist organisation, and whether there is a wider risk to the public that they will be subjected to this support.

So what is this risk to the public? That they will be blown up by my words and thoughts? Chris Beckford is anxious to ensure that no one will be subjected’ to my views on Hamas and the Palestinians. Some might call this censorship but I would be loathe to do so.

This is not just a paper exercise. I was reported to the Police by Zionists and one racist in particular by the name of Heidi Bachram. The Zionist movement in this country is busy trying to extinguish our freedom of speech having done much the same in Israel.

The corrupt rogues and thieves who govern us go scot free. Billions of pounds went to the crooked cronies of the Tories via a VIP channel for procurement. Yet the Police are not interested in investigating corruption, perjury or miscarriages of justice. To date just 2 people have been investigated over the Post Office conspiracy to jail and convict nearly a thousand innocent sub-postmasters. The Met Police are not interested in crimes by the rich and powerful.

Clamping down on free speech in this country or playing the part of the Gestapo by Germany’s police is what freedom under capitalism means in the 21st century as world war comes ever closer and climate catastrophe signals the end of the human race.

So I guess I am an ‘extremist’ because i want to abolish capitalism before it abolishes us.

Tony Greenstein

17 April 2024

Banning an Anti-Racist & Anti-Fascist Film is the Last Straw - Our Branch SE/6246 Has Just Passed a Motion of No Confidence in Unite’s Racist General Secretary Sharon Graham

 It’s time for the SWP, Socialist Party & Counterfire to break with Graham’s Social Imperialism & Stop Apologising for Her

ON RESISTANCE STREET (2023) Trailer

Unite 4 Palestine Activists Meeting

Wednesday 17 April 6.30 p.m.

Please register here

https://tinyurl.com/mpc6h77t

 


On Monday I learnt that Sharon Graham had banned On Resistance Street an anti-fascist and anti-racist  film that looks at the role music has played in the fight against fascism and racism.

The reasons for the ban were explained by Graham’s sycophantic bag carrier, Sarah Carpenter, who, as Regional Secretary for the South-East, banned another film, Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie. Carpenter quoted an Executive Committee resolution of September 2023 that:

‘Unite should not use its premises or resources to show or promote any external films or other content that does not relate to our industrial agenda to support the pay, terms and conditions of our members and/or support existing Unite policies.

Leave aside the ‘explanation’ of Carpenter, a bureaucrat without an original idea in her head, or the tunnel vision of Sharon Graham whose ‘industrial agenda’ poses no threat to British capitalism. Graham is either so politically illiterate that she does not understand that historically racism and fascism have been used to divide and weaken, if not destroy the trade union and socialist movement. Or else she does not care.

Carpenter’s suggestion that anti-racism and anti-fascism is not part of ‘existing Unite policies’ testifies to her stupidity. Even more worrying, Carpenter also wrote that:

In this context the Union should be especially careful to avoid appearing to endorse any material which causes unnecessary offence to members.’

Is she really saying that Unite should not offend racists and fascists? This is very similar to the ‘reason’ that Gail Cartmail gave for the banning of Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie when she said that:

The General Secretary... is also clear that the Unite position must be that we do not stoke division through anti-semitism and anti-Muslim racism

On Resistance Street was shot on location in England, Belfast and New York.  It carries an original soundtrack of 20 songs.

The film revisits the ‘Rock Against Racism’ movement of the late 70s, noting its influence on future waves of radical artists and political activists.  It also shines a light – for the very first time in a film – on a 1950s organisation, ‘The Stars Campaign For Inter-Racial Friendship’ which was founded by a group of famous British jazz musicians and entertainers in the wake of the 1958 Notting Hill riots. It provided venues in West London for black and white youth to socialise together.  The film also highlights the crucial role played by punk rock in uniting young people in 1970s’ sectarian Belfast.

On Resistance Street tracks contemporary drifts to the right in the West, the weaponization of Black grammatical history, right wing musical cultural appropriation and the role of anti-racist social media groups today.  It looks at grime music and the historic role played by Black musicians in British music.

This decision is nothing less than shocking. For a trade union to ban an anti-fascist and anti-racist film is a sign of how the Sharon Graham leadership has degenerated politically.

I therefore moved a resolution at my own branch last night ‘noting with dismay’ all the lies of Graham and her flunkeys. For the first time that I can remember I was criticised for my moderation! Another member promptly moved an amendment that said the branch had no confidence in Graham. Just 2 out of 11 members abstained, the rest voted in favour.

Graham is the most right-wing boss of Unite and its predecessor unions since Arthur Deakin in the 50s. Graham stood on a platform that rejected Len McCluskey’s support for the Corbyn Project. She passed herself off as apolitical but in reality she is firmly on the right. Her objection to anti-racist education is matched by her support for Zionism and the Israeli state.

It is no accident that Graham has done nothing to support Palestinians in Gaza besides writing a solitary letter to the PGFTU, nearly 3 weeks after its headquarters in Gaza were bombed. The very next day she made it clear that she favoured continuing to send arms to Israel to continue the bombing, the more the merrier since to her all that matters is British jobs.

Yet despite her appalling record when it comes to international solidarity, anti-racism and anti-imperialism, the ‘revolutionary’ sects of the British left, have supported her through thick and thin. Both the SWP and the Socialist Party supported Graham in the election for General Secretary and Counterfire welcomed her victory.

Richard Allday's rant on WhatsApp in defence of Graham

Richard Allday, a Counterfire supporter and member of Unite’s Executive only last Friday chose to attack me on the Unite 4 Palestine WhatsApp group for my ‘obsession with Sharon Graham’ and my ‘unsubstantiated abuse.’ i.e. criticism of Graham.

To support strikes whilst rejecting their political implications, as Graham does, is to reject class politics. It is to treat the state as neutral and capitalism as a fair and equitable system rather than one based on exploitation. This is called economism.

Unfortunately the ruling class is not so stupid as Graham. It knows that even if Unite wins a few individual strikes, they still have all the cards. The rich and powerful can easily adjust the rules of the game through their tame puppets in parliament. They have the Police to reign in workers who get unruly and of course, if the worst comes to the worst, they can make going on strike itself harder and harder.

The Establishment is more than capable of winning back through legislation that which they lose industrially. Being ‘apolitical’ means accepting privatisation of public services and austerity in order to fund increased expenditure on the military. Graham supports increasing ‘defence’ expenditure even though it means cutting the NHS, education and social services where Unite also has members.

Concentrating solely on strikes means abandoning the fight against racism, global warming, war and imperialism. It is to define class oppression as solely economic without seeing that capitalism doesn’t just oppress people in the workplace but during their lives outside the workplace. There is little advantage in gaining higher wages if the Welfare State is under attack, the NHS is in decline, schools are privatised as academies and housing becomes harder to get.

Graham is fighting for a larger share of the imperialist pie not its abolition. Graham is an avid supporter of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and supported dockers refusing to handle Russian oil. There is some solidarity action that Graham does support, the problem is that it doesn’t involve genocide against the Palestinians.

When it came to Ukraine Graham didn’t mince her words:

“There is overwhelming support being expressed throughout Unite to support the people of Ukraine. It is not only the struggle for democracy that concerns us but also the struggle for people’s rights to work and build their future in peace.”

Yet when it comes to Gaza, getting Graham to condemn anything Israel does is like drawing teeth. In her letter condemning the bombing of the PGFTU headquarters in Gaza City Graham fails even to mention the word ‘Israel’. It is as if the bombing of the Trade union HQ happened by itself. Likewise Graham did not once let the word ‘genocide’ slip from her lips.

These things have not gone unnoticed by the Zionists. Writing in the anti-Palestinian Jewish News ‘Liar’ Lee Harpin described how,

In a further put down on far-left foreign policy dogma Graham also wrote “Similarly, we cannot be expected to affiliate to organisations that actively work against our members and their jobs.

Examples include groups that look to build networks inside trade unions to undermine the defence industry or demand the disbandment of NATO and AUKUS.

Under Graham’s leadership Unite has also taken great strides in attempting to combat antisemitism within the movement. Despite early claims that the left-wing leader would seek to move the union away from Labour and disaffiliate, Unite now appears to be opting to become a “critical friend” of the Starmer led Labour Party.

Unfortunately Britain’s far-left sects are unable to see beyond their own noses. They are so pleased that a union leader supports strikes that they are unable to understand that you can support strikes and still be a racist, warmongering reactionary like Sharon Graham.

In an effusive pro-Graham article in Dissent Olly Haynes observed that Unite refused to support the Enough is Enough coalition with the RMT and CWU because

two of the coalition’s five demands—building affordable housing and imposing heavier taxes on the rich—could only be enacted directly through state power. ...

The first indication that Sharon Graham was a Zionist cuckoo in the trade union nest was when Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie was banned.

On 23 July 2023 the far-right Campaign Against Antisemitism claimed credit for the ban on Corbyn The Big Lie. They wrote:

Following correspondence with Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Unite union has cancelled the screening of a propaganda film about the antisemitic former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn....

However, following contact from Campaign Against Antisemitism in which we pointed out that the scheduling of the event appeared to be contradictory to the reports that the film has been banned in all of Unite’s buildings, it was cancelled....

Campaign Against Antisemitism commends Unite for its swift and decisive action to cancel the screening as soon as we brought it to its attention.

Graham’s apolitical election stance was a cover for very right-wing politics. To her capitalism and imperialism are perfectly normal and therefore not political. Is it any surprise that she refused to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide? But if Britain’s far-left organisations displayed their typically blinkered approach, engaging in a bout of wishful thinking, then the Zionist organisations were not fooled. Indeed it is highly likely that Graham signalled to them that Len McCluskey’s support for the Palestinians would be jettisoned.

Euan Philips (David Gordstein) of Labour Against Antisemitism, welcomed the election of Graham as General Secretary.

The SWP, SP and Countefire simply refused to accept that the Skwawkbox’s allegations of Graham’s nepotism, turning a blind eye to racism and despotism amounted to anything. Despite Skawkbox being vilified at no time has Graham disputed their allegations.

At her first Executive Committee meeting as General Secretary (September 2021) Graham ‘Pledged to make our Union the most democratic and transparent it has ever been.’ Actions however speak louder than words as her banning of films demonstrates.

Graham promised to ‘Take the lead or provide practical support to other groups tackling wider societal issues such as; climate change, the housing crisis and racism.’ Under Len McCluskey Unite’s Community branches were established. It is no secret that Graham is hostile to them as she sees them as naturally political.

Graham pledged ‘there will be no blank cheques’ for the Labour Party. The cutting of affiliation fees by McLuskey, has been reversed without protest. Graham also promised to

·               Introduce a Member Hotline in my Office.

·               Make sure that my expenses are accessible to members online.

·               Introduce ‘General Secretary Live’ online Q&A

Below is a time line of Graham’s record as General Secretary:

i.              On the 8 June Sarah Carpenter banned Corbyn – The Big Lie from being shown at Unite’s premises in Portsmouth on Graham’s ‘advice’.

ii.            From 7 October to 3 November, Graham delayed calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

iii.         In her statement of 26 June to staff and officers Graham claimed that Unite ‘was the first major union to publicly and unambiguously call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.’ This was a lie. UNISON called for an immediate ceasefire on October 26 and it also condemned Israel for its attacks on civilians unlike the even handed Unite statement a week later.

iv.         Graham has not only refused to attend the national Palestinian demonstrations but she has refused to allow Unite’s national banner to be present.

v.            Graham tried to pressurise Unite official Simon Dubbins to calling off a Unite Palestinian event at Labour Party conference. She has now suspended him.

vi.         Graham also tried to persuade Pete Kavanagh, Regional Secretary for London & Eastern Region, from speaking at the Palestinian demonstration in London on January 13.

vii.       Graham’s Chief of Staff, Sarah Carpenter, appointed without any reference to the Executive, threatened Kavanagh with loss of a pension bonus if he continued to support the Palestinians.

viii.    Graham said nothing about genocide in Gaza until March 25,over two weeks after, when she wrote a letter of ‘solidarity’ to the Palestinian trade union PGFTU after the bombing of their HQ in Gaza City.

ix.         One day later, March 26, Graham issued a letter condemning attempts to stop the manufacture of arms for Israel. Graham attacked ‘groups that look to build networks inside trade unions to undermine the defence industry or demand the disbandment of NATO and AUKUS’.

In her letter Graham said ‘there is no contradiction for a trade union to hold a position of solidarity with Palestinian workers’ whilst making arms intended to murder those same workers. She held that ‘it is a core principle of Unite that as a trade union the 'first claim' on our priorities’ is to support the right of Unite members to produce arms to kill other workers.

Clearly the words ‘international solidarity’ are alien to Graham. It is shameful that the left sects have failed to call her so far. There are indications, judging by a letter critical of Graham in Socialist Worker that the SWP is revising its attitude. Let us hope that Counterfire and the Socialist Party do likewise.

Graham could have told Unite workers that she would support them refusing to handle arms destined for Israel’s murder machine in Gaza in the same way as happened with Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride in 1973 when they refused to service engines destined for Pinochet’s airforce.

According to Graham’s logic the right of workers at IG Farben to produce Zyklon B for the gas chambers trumped the rights of Jews not to be murdered.

x.           On 11 April the Officers National Committee submitted a collective grievance concerning the flouting of grievance procedures and the victimisation of workers who challenged Graham’s repressive regime. They wrote:

The length of time that grievances and investigations are taking to reach a conclusion is not acceptable in a modern workplace... employees are waiting months after submitting a grievance due to a refusal of some to participate in the process, being banned from your workplace when not even suspended, and an application of “special measures

Using legal privilege to justify enforcing a refusal to allow an employee to present their grievance is disgraceful and anti-trade union... part of our role is to challenge power in the workplace where that power is used to suppress workers seeking transparency, expressing their genuinely held views or seeking protection from abuse.

Threats of legal action for raising a grievance... is... a denial of natural justice.... In seeking to declare a grievance invalid the employer has cited the issues of trust and confidence.... Loss of trust and confidence is a legitimate reason for dismissal by an employer so to reference it is to further intimidate the worker.’

The time has come for the left to stop making excuses for Graham. Richard Allday told me that ‘she has not spoken out on the current atrocity in Palestine’ but he failed to ask why this is. The time has come for the left groups to put clear red water between them and Graham.

Tony Greenstein