Chris Williamson is a disgrace

Chris Williamson MP (Derby North) says the Labour party had been “too apologetic” over complaints of antisemitism.

Williamson, a former shadow minister, told a meeting of Sheffield Momentum that Labour had been “demonised” over the issue.

He said: “I’ve got to say I think our party’s response has been partly responsible for that. Because, in my opinion, we’ve backed off far too much, we’ve given too much ground, we’ve been too apologetic.”

Following the remarks Hope not Hate called on Labour to expel Williamson.

Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum, has acknowledged that there is a “major problem” with some party members expressing antisemitic views: “It’s now obvious we have a much larger number of people with hardcore antisemitic opinions which, unfortunately, is polluting the atmosphere in a lot of constituency parties and, in particular, online.”

Williamson was already in trouble for arranging a screening in parliament of a film defending Jackie Walker (suspended from the party over comments about antisemitism). The screening was arranged at the behest of the so-called Jewish Voice for Labour group whose main raison d’etre is to deny that antisemitism is a serious problem (or even exists) within Labour. JVL has been outspoken in defending Williamson in the past.

Deputy leader Tom Watson has reported Williamson to Labour’s chief whip Nick Brown and the party’s general secretary Jennie Formby.

It is expected that Brown and Formby will instruct Williamson to cancel the booking (UPDATE: booking cancelled; here‘s JVL’s statement on that and their later statement following Williamson’s suspension from the party is here).

A Labour Party spokeswoman said: “It’s completely inappropriate to book a room for an event about an individual who is suspended from the party and subject to ongoing disciplinary procedures. This falls below the standards we expect of MPs.”

Williamson has now tweeted the full text of an apology (below). But Watson called it “heavily caveated” and tweeted that he would remove the whip if it were in his gift.

BobfromBrockley has been keeping an eye on Williamson for some time:

I recently posted on Chris Williamson, the odious Labour MP who really needs to have the party whip removed from him. I didn’t think Williamson could stoop any lower than he has already, but today he signed a petition defending Gilad Atzmon, tweeted the petition, then deleted the tweet, and later wrote a half-arsed non-apology. (Atzmon had been banned by Islington council from playing there in the Blockheads. Not sure I approve of this ban, as when he is playing saxophone in someone else’s band he hasn’t got a platform for his politics. But given how toxic he is, I’m not going to complain about him being considered a pariah.)

Williamson’s apology to me reveals he is either more stupid or more dishonest than we already realised but either way confirming he doesn’t care at all about racism against Jews. Because either he saw a petition complaining about someone being accused of antisemitism and just assumed the accusation was false without bothering to research it (in which case he is remarkably stupid and irresponsible, as well as automatically assumes accusations of antisemitism are always false) or he’s lying.

And Williamson has a track record:

• he defended Cyril Chilson, an Atzmon-supporting antisemite who was expelled from Labour;
• he apparently lied about not knowing about the antisemitism that got Scott Nelson expelled, and then basically revealed he was lying by insisting Nelson had apologised;
• he regularly tweets and retweets antisemites;
• and loads more.

I should also say that I find it irritating that he was never forced to apologise for his accolade for Vanessa Beeley, a cheer-leader for Assad’s reign of terror in Syria (as well as another Atzmon fan), or that Williamson’s support for Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian regime in Venezuela doesn’t attract more criticism. (For more on Williamson’s terrible politics on Latin America, see Paul Canning’s tweets, e.g. this thread. For more on how Williamson has promoted Kremlin-backed fake news on Syrian chemical attacks, see Victoria Freeman on Twitter.) Antisemitism has a corrosive influence on part of the Corbyn left, but the “anti-imperialist” blindness to suffering in Syria, Venezuela and elsewhere has a corrosive influence too and should make people just as angry.

Postscript from JD:

If this was simply a matter of an isolated maverick MP with semi-Stalinist views and a taste for conspiracy theories, it might not matter that much. But someone who was present at the Sheffield meeting told me:

“One thing struck me in the meeting: the unanimity of it. Sean Matgamna wrote somewhere in the past about how the British Trotskyist groups moved in convoy. Here, the convoy has grown and tightened. From the Morning Star and Labour opportunists to Socialist Appeal, Socialist Action, the SP, the SWP – everything that Williamson said was the common-sense of the far left. It brought home strongly how much is wrong with a left culture where 70 people bellowing about how much they agree with their leaders is seen as a great afternoon”.