Congratulations to Sam Gorst, who has just been elected Labour Party councillor in Cressington – despite a nasty campaign against him.
In the run-up to the local and European Union elections rightwingers in and outside the Labour Party have been busy scrolling through the Facebook and Twitter accounts of Labour candidates in particular. Naturally, they have been hugely successful in discovering ‘problematic’, often historic, posts (that were not considered problematic at all a few short years back).
Sam Gorst, for example, is under investigation for alleged “anti-Semitism”, because it appears he tweeted something “in defence of former London mayor Ken Livingstone”. His accounts have been deleted, but if that is all, then clearly the compliance unit has once again massively overreached. After all, Livingstone resigned from Labour after the NEC decided to readmit him after a one-year-suspension. The right wing – much emboldened by their success with the campaign to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism – freaked out and the Corbyn leadership was in agony over what to do with Livingstone. He resigned to spare Corbyn any more blushes – to no avail, of course. Because Corbyn and his allies have continuously given in to the witch-hunters rather than standing up to them, Livingstone is now ‘known’ to be an anti-Semite (as is Corbyn himself, of course).
Click here to read an article by Moshe Machover on the ‘Ken Livingstone affair’: “The campaign [by the witch-hunters] has been remarkably successful and, of course, the biggest scalp so far is that of former London mayor and former NEC member, Ken Livingstone. What did he say that got him suspended? Hitler came to power in 1932 and “supported Zionism until he went mad”. Of course, he got the date wrong, Hitler came to power in 1933. It was also wrong to personalise the shift in policy. But the point he was making about the Nazi regime and Zionism is basically correct, as I shall demonstrate.”
Ken Livingstone is new honorary president of Labour Against the Witchhunt (alongside comrade Machover) – check out how LAW fought to extract a rare apology from the Mail on Sunday when it maliciously misreported our meeting with him and Jackie Walker on March 25.