Kevin Ovenden explains why the view of racism in Diane Abbott’s letter is wrong, but so is the pile-on against her instigated by Starmer and the Tories

Long-standing anti-racist MP Diane Abbott’s letter to the Observer has provoked a political storm. It was misguided and wrong. 

She has withdrawn it and apologised. 

The letter was mistaken in saying that only black people can face racism. It said that other, overwhelmingly white groups – the letter mentioned Jewish people, Irish, Travellers and Gypsy people – may face discrimination and even violence, but that is due to “prejudice… not racism”. 

That is not a true distinction. Not just historically, but today. You will find pubs today in many parts of England with signs saying “No Travellers”. There used to be signs saying “No Blacks”. Decades of anti-racist activity have at least achieved the removal of those. 

The brutal physical attack on two elderly Jewish bakers in Stamford Hill, north London, last year was of the same kind as the racist murder of pensioner Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham ten years ago. 

But being wrong in your categorisation of racism, different forms of racism or of xenophobia and prejudice is not the same as being racist. Tory minister Grant Shapps’ claim that the letter amounted to “hateful anti-semitism” is a calumny from a man who serves in a government that:

• has passed a law enabling the seizure and destruction of Traveller caravans. To be clear: that is the destruction of the homes of an ethnic minority
• has a Home Secretary who diverts the fight to end Child Sexual Exploitation into a dangerous campaign to blame “British-Pakistani men”. A lie that her own department refutes 
• has a former leader, Boris Johnson, who said he didn’t like being bypassed as he was supposed to be “the Fuehrer”.
• maintains close links with the antisemitic nationalist right in Eastern Europe…

We could go on… and on.  

It is not only the racist Tory government that is unscrupulously trying to make political capital. Keir Starmer ignored Diane Abbott’s apology and withdrew the whip from her. 

Who can doubt that he spotted an opening to move against a Labour left MP? Journalists have reported that all left MPs are under heavy manners and threat by the leadership. 

After all, no move was ever made against an MP of the Labour right, Siobhan McDonagh (or others). She suggested on Radio 4 that Jewish people were connected with capitalism, saying “yes” in response to the question “to be anti-capitalist you have to be antisemitic?”

And this suspension of the whip is by a Labour leader who has sought to bury the report by Martin Forde KC into racism in the Labour Party and the handling of complaints. 

Forde has had to go public to restate his findings that there is a “hierarchy of response to racism” in the Labour Party. 

It means that complaints of racism against black and Asian – and especially Muslim – members are taken far less seriously, or even ignored.  

Incidentally, those who join the pile-on over the letter by pointing out only that Jewish people do indeed face racism (they do) while ignoring the same mistake made about Travellers betray their own selective anti-racism. 

This is not surprising from political parties who have councillors who routinely mount racist agitation against Gypsies. 

Public figures as far from Diane Abbott as broadcaster Robert Peston and Tony Blair’s former political secretary John McTernan said on Sunday that Abbott’s apology should be taken in good faith. They pointed out the decades of systematic racist abuse she has faced. 

But both the Tories and Starmer-Labour look to be for a full-blown witch-hunt, each of them aiming to smear the left. 

The left, the unions and the anti-racist movement should stand up to that and point out what is happening. 

Frank debate

But that requires more than Diane’s apology. It requires engaging in what those in bloodlust battle cry want to drown out from public life. 

That is a full and serious discussion about racism and how to fight every aspect of it, and the broadest unity in action against racism and the growing far-right. It is a discussion to have throughout the movement and among all those we reach.

The biggest and tragic mistake behind the letter was to lose touch with the potent sentiment of unity. When widely held it has always been when the anti-racist movement has leapt forward. It is the foundation of the working-class movement. 

It is a sentiment Diane herself has voiced at countless anti-racist and anti-fascist events, from which Tory MPs and all but a few Labour ones have studiously absented themselves. 

In response to the rise of the fascist right and racism in the 1970s, Phil Lynott of the band Thin Lizzy wore a T-shirt saying: “More Blacks. More Dogs. More Irish.” It inverted the infamous signs on B&Bs in the 1950s refusing service to black and Irish people. 

It was not only popular racism that was the problem. Black people were subjected to the most vicious police racism. Asians especially faced obscene immigration raids and intrusions at the airports. 

It was the height of the Irish Troubles. Irish homes in Britain were frequently raided. Not only the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, but in many lesser cases people were fitted up. We are talking about state racism of the kind belatedly admitted to in the irreformable Metropolitan Police. 

The National Front was semi-openly antisemitic and encouraged attacks on Jewish people. 

In the face of this the cry was unity. 

Many Jewish people, and not only those of the left, brought their families’ traumatic histories to bear in exposing the far right as actual Nazis. 

Those who had experienced the fight against anti-Jewish racism in the 1930s funnelled that into the movement of 40 years on. 

It also meant, for example, that the most militant and socialistic elements of the Black revolutionary movement insisted on “Black” as a political concept. 

Not a skin colour, but a community of interests experiencing racism and state repression of different but related characters. 

This was the work of many people such as Olive Morris, Darcus Howe, Ambalanaver Sivanandan and others. It met on the road the arguments and agitation of the anti-capitalist left in general. 

There was an important debate where revolutionary, as opposed to separatist, black and Asian strands argued that the “white” Irish were in fact “politically Black”. After all, they had hundreds of political prisoners held under the kind of legal regime that Britain had imposed on its African and Asian colonies. 

Above all, there was unity in the struggle, an urge to further that unity, and – at its best – serious debate and fraternal disagreement over how to do so. Sometimes schisms, but overall an upwards curve and towards each other. 

The retreat of the movement in the 1980s was as if a river had gone from full flood to ebb tide. Instead of different streams coming together, they tended to fall into their own channels and rivulets. 

The same had happened on an even greater scale in the US, from where all sorts of ideas were imported that emphasised separateness, division and even mutual antagonism. 

The Marxist-influenced left had looked at the precursors to the full-blown racist ideology developed to justify the transatlantic slave trade. 

They found a shift in 15th century Europe from antisemitism based on religion to what would later become race and how that noxious ideology provided tools for the systematic racism of the 18th century onwards. 

The separatist or “identitarian” backlash against the radicals instead tried to invent a deep and historic antagonism between Jewish and black people. 

Unfortunately, and despite all sorts of positive developments, we are living with the impact of these sectional and separatist politics still today. They have a baleful influence. They are incapable of confronting reaction effectively. And they frequently provide openings to the racist right while demoralising the anti-racist left. 

There is much more to discuss about all this both historically and in the experiences of our own lifetimes. There are different points of view and debates. 

It is a discussion of the labour movement, of all the social movements, among anti-racists and among all of goodwill. And we should have these discussions in an open and comradely way. 

It is very unfortunate that Diane Abbott’s ill-considered letter has given a golden opportunity for a Tory government that is beset by problems and a Labour leader whom more and more people find underwhelming. 

That is not an excuse either for falling in behind an unjustified pile-on and wouldbe witch-hunt or for not clarifying things ourselves on the left and being honest about disagreements. 

That is best done in a comradely atmosphere, as opposed to heresy hunting.