Lansman, the JVL and the CPGB (Weekly Worker)

Image: By Source, Fair use

An astonishing but useful insight into the thinking of Momentum's leadership appeared in the Jewish Chronicle yesterday:

Jon Lansman, the architect of Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to power, thinks the “very existence” of pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice For Labour group is inflaming tensions between Labour and the Jewish community, sources have said.

A senior figure in left-wing campaign group Momentum said that its founder, Jon Lansman, believed it is problematic that senior JVL figures claim to speak for the entire community but actually only reflect the views of a small faction of anti-Zionist Jews.

The source also told the JC that Mr Lansman felt it was entirely wrong for leading JVL figures to suggest that their organisation deserves equal recognition from Labour, on a par with the bigger, more established Jewish Labour Movement.

That there is no love left between Lansman and the JVL miscreants is not new. Tony Greenstein and Jackie walker split from Momentum a while back when they did not get their way originally establishing a "Grassroots momentum" which has disappeared and been replaced with the Jewish Voice for Labour groupscule to back Corbyn and cause mischief with the mainstream Jewish community.

There is little support left for the Labour Party in the wider Jewish community other than in the form of the long running Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) that has been an affiliate of Labour for decades.

It's not just the JVL that causes problems. The Communist Party of Great Britain's (Weekly Worker) front organisation Labour Against the Witch Hunt which has overlapping memberships and ties.  Greenstein is a regular writer in the pages of the Weekly Worker and of course is himself protesting about his suspension from the Labour Party. His preferred subject is of course Zionism. This self-obsessed individual presents himself as the expert on this field of course.

LAW also seem to have a problem with Jewish concerns about Labour. When the JLM started to monitor anti-Semitism in the Labour Party the comrades dismissed these concerns in no uncertain terms:

We call on all Labour Party members to stay well clear of the Jewish Labour Movement’s latest stunt. The JLM, which is the sister party of the Zionist Labor Party in Israel, has written to CLP secretaries, asking them to distribute their “survey” on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party to all local members. Many CLP secretaries have quite rightly moved this email directly into their Spam folder. If you have been unfortunate enough to have received the email, we urge you to do the same.

Of course even Corbyn and McDonnell have admitted to the existence of anti-Semitism in their party despite the fact neither of them will do much about it. No other ethnic group would have their worries dismissed so lightly. The outlook of LAW is effectively racist. Our concerns are of no importance whatsoever to them.

Of course LAW is full of entryists from the CPGB (Weekly Worker) a tiny group of around 50 or so individuals who have tried burying themselves in all sorts of organisations from the Socialist Alliance in the early 2000's to the more recent, now failed Left Unity Party project launched by Ken Loach.

The group present themselves as the Labour Party Marxists who just happen to hold joint "educationals" with the CPGB!  Members of the LPM and some of LAW are in breach of Labour Party rules but it's unlikely anyone will bother to act. The CPGB mob also cause disruption amongst other left-groups hiding inside the Labour Party.

However despite all this Momentum, the CLPD LRC/Labour Breifing & JVL crowd have come together to form a united slate. The JVL write:

We are delighted to report that the existing diffrences between Momentum and a number of other campaigning groups have been resolved.

The united slate of candidates below is currently backed by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), Labour Briefing Co-op, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (LCND) and Momentum.

At the end of the day no matter what Lansman may say (and it needs to be remembered he's no friend of ours) for pragmatic reasons his organisation Momentum is at the end of the day a danger not just to our community like the other groups but also a threat to democracy.