Former Vice Chair of Hastings and Rye Labour Party, Kay Green, is a socialist activist but no longer a ‘party animal’. Here, she interviews Gill Knight about what’s been going on recently.

This week, the Equality and Human Rights Commission declared itself satisfied with the action Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has taken to, in his words, “drive out anti-Semitism” but local former members are surprised, to say the least, about who the Party has “driven out”. Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), a national network group for Jewish Labour members, have stated that as a result of the party’s actions, “Labour is no place for left wing Jews”. They say that since mid-2021, they have ‘repeatedly alerted the EHRC to the disproportionate targeting of Jewish members of the Labour Party for disciplinary action over allegations of antisemitism’. So, what is going on? I asked Hastings and Rye Labour Party’s former Women’s Officer, Gill Knight, about her activism, and her experience of the Party.

(Left: Gill Knight, photo by Samara Jayne Martin)

Gill told me her story over a coffee at a local community gathering after the National Education Union rally on 1 February, where I found her on the local People’s Assembly stall – a new initiative for our town that she is helping to set up.  Gill has been a political activist since she retired some 18 years ago, and the chaos that has been UK party politics in recent years has not had the power to change that at all. She was actively involved in anti-austerity, anti-benefit sanctions and housing campaigns with Unite Community before the Labour Party started cutting back on members, and that work continues to this day. 

Gill was Women’s Officer for Hastings and Rye CLP from around 2016 until their AGM in October 2021. She told that meeting the reason she was standing down was that she didn’t think the local Labour Party was interested in women’s rights.

Long-term activist

During her tenure as Women’s Officer, she worked, through Women’s Voice, to encourage women to come forward to be councillors, running some excellent political education and outreach events for local women, including International Women’s Day parades and talks, and sessions of confidence building and public speaking delivered by her union, Unite. She founded a Labour Women’s Forum after obtaining a grant from Labour’s Regional HQ. She then organized a series of meetings to draw up a constitution and programme of events, including Ella Baker community engagement training. During her time active within the party, the percentage of female councillors in Hastings rose to almost 50%.

Her activities in the Party were not, though, limited to the remit of her Women’s Officer role. She worked in the local party office in 2015, when Sarah Owen (now MP for Luton North) was the candidate for Hastings and Rye, and has taken part in campaigns and canvassing in both local and national elections every year, so she was neither a ‘single issue’ member, nor one of those who was only active under one particular leadership.

Cancelled

She attended the party AGM in December 2022 expecting her active involvement to continue but, when voting came up, was informed curtly that she was not a member, and should not be at the meeting. At first, she thought perhaps her direct debit had run out – she was slowed up (for a while!) after having a stroke a year or so back, so it was easy to imagine something might have gone wrong. She emailed the local Party Chair but got no reply. Checking her bank account, she found that her last payment had gone out in September, and on applying to the CLP Secretary, was told that the party had cancelled her membership in October. There had been no communication at the time and to this day, there has been no explanation.

There does not appear to be anything in the Labour Party’s rule book that allows for the rash of unexplained suspensions and expulsions the Party has been indulging in, and Gill herself is particularly angry that so many Jewish socialists, including several in her own constituency, have been targeted. Local cases have included popular community activists such as the late Mike Howard, who was Jewish, and who died with the Party’s accusation hanging over him, and former HBC councillor Leah Levane, also Jewish, who was expelled in the middle of a Party conference that she was attending as a delegate for Hastings and Rye. As an ex-member myself, I have my own ideas as to what the ‘purges’ have been about and although random expulsions seem to be a feature of Labour at the moment, I suspect the kind of intolerance it shows is symptomatic of the way party politics generally is going.

No need for party activists?

Gill isn’t Jewish, but she is a socialist and a committed activist. There, I think, is the vital clue to what’s going on. perhaps it’s more that activists, especially socialist ones, are a nuisance to politicians who would prefer a US-style, PR-driven campaign that doesn’t have unpredictable humans involved. 

As the Housing Officer for the Sussex Coast branch of Unite, Gill worked with Rory Heap to initiate the Housing Action Group. She tells me they have been campaigning to make housing a trade union issue, and it is now on Unite’s National Forum. She had much to tell me about the urgent housing needs in our town, and what Unite Community are doing about it. She still works with former Labour Party comrades including councillors, via Unite’s Housing campaigns. She also volunteers for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and is currently working with the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions, and attends national women’s conferences, taking part in feminist campaigns in the UK and internationally. 

Rejection

It’s a great shame, both for democracy and for those so rudely kicked out that Labour has chosen to reject people like Gill – but like many activists, she hasn’t found being outside the party made much difference to her political work. I asked her whether she’d notice the difference when the next election campaign comes around.  She said she doesn’t know how that’s going to be, yet. She won’t campaign for, or vote for, any political party that breaks its own rules and doesn’t respect democratic process.

The council meeting took place just eight days before the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published its long-awaited report into antisemitism in the Labour Party. The two events are inextricably linked: the initial refusal of the Labour Party to adopt the IHRA definition formed a central part of the long running accusations of antisemitism that were made against it. And this led to the extraordinary decision to remove the whip from Jeremy Corbyn just five days ago. 

Cllr Judy Rogers addresses a council meeting in 2019

The council motion for the adoption of the IHRA definition was filed and led by Cllr Dany Louise, who was elected in 2018 as Labour candidate in Old Town ward but quit the party less than a year later citing antisemitism in the national party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. She later went on to write a blog in the midst of the General Election campaign last autumn cataloguing experiences of alleged incidents of antisemitism within the local party, including the instigation of multiple anti-Israel motions at party meetings, refusal to avoid major religious dates for non-Christians when setting the yearly council calendar, and the appointment of another Jewish Labour councillor Leah Levane as chair of the Labour group in the council (see our report in HIP 142 Jews and Anti-Semites in Hastings: The Peculiar World of Dany Louise).

Objections

So why is the IHRA definition so contentious, why does Cllr Louise object to Cllr Levane, and why was there no pushback in the council meeting? 

This can only be understood by looking into the history behind the IHRA definition. It was first published in 2005 as a ‘working definition’ by the European Union Monitoring Committee, with the aim of providing guidance on monitoring incidents of antisemitism, but it was never formally adopted by the EU and removed from their website following criticisms from academics, jurists, and human rights lawyers, many of whom are Jewish. 

Some believe that it is too vague to be of any value in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and can thus be misused; others argue that it stifles free speech in criticisms of Israel. Even Kenneth Stern, the Jewish-American author of the original text, has said he thinks that its use in quasi-legal settings would be “unconstitutional and unwise”.

Party politics

However, in 2016, it was adopted by 31 member countries of the IHRA, and subsequently by mainstream political parties in the UK, though rejected by the Green Party on the ground that the definition was “politically engineered to restrict criticism of Israel’s heinous crimes upon the Palestinian people”. 

Within the national Labour party there was much debate before adoption. A grouping styling itself Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), set up in 2017, argued that the IHRA examples of antisemitism fell short of providing “a clear and unambiguous statement based on attitudes to Jews as Jews, not attitudes to a country, Israel”. Co-chair of JVL is  Cllr Louise’s Hastings bugbear, Cllr Levane.

Within the council meeting last month, continuation of the Labour party feud was headed off by an amendment tabled by Cllr Judy Rogers. While accepting the full IHRA wording including its stated examples, her amendment added further examples that are designed to protect those criticising Israel – and even campaigning against its actions – so long as the actions are not tied into antisemitism: seemingly, a somewhat circular argument but one which carried the field.  Cllr Louise agreed (with some stated reluctance) to accept it. Cllr Levane said nothing, and abstained on the motion, which was otherwise voted through unanimously.

It remains to be seen whether Sir Keir Starmer will find – or want to find – an equivalent compromise with Mr Corbyn in the national party discourse.