Meanwhile in To(r)y Town

BRIAN COLEMAN calls for action!

AS NATO leaders dithered over what to do about Libya, one man had no hesitation in calling for action when he heard that the revolution had spilled over into his territory.

A group of young people calling themselves "Topple the Tyrants" had moved into the £11 million, 8-bedroom house in Hampstead Garden Suburb which Colonel Gaddafi's son Saif bought himself in 2009.

Promising to look after the place for the Libyan people, they said this mansion with its private swimming pool would be open to refugees from the Libyan conflict, or anywhere else.

Barnet Tory councillor Brian Coleman, who doubles as Barnet and Camden's member in the London Assembly, and chair of the capital's Fire Authority, called on William Hague to act:
“The Foreign Secretary should take action immediately to seize Gaddafi’s son's house in Hampstead Garden Suburb in my constituency".

My blogging colleague Vicky Morris, who lives in Barnet and is on the local trades union council, was first to comment, thinking this was "a bit extreme", even for the Tory whose dashing driving skills earned him the title "Mr.Toad" from some people.

"The SAS on the lawns of Garden Suburb? I know Coleman's lost his patience with the residents lately, since they've been complaining about him putting up the CPZ fees, but really! "
http://vickim57.blogspot.com/2011/03/topple-toads-coleman-calls-on-hague-to.html

"Good to see Brian Coleman standing up for the rights of dictators everywhere, " said another local, Rog T, http://www.barneteye.blogspot.com/,
thinking perhaps of Cllr.Coleman's lack of patience with those who challenge him, on the council or in the fire service.

To be fair, the Toad made clear his concern was for local interests. “The squatters, who are a blight to the area, should be evicted and moved-on to protect the nearby residents.”
Even if he was concerned with a problem they hadn't raised, rather than those they have. As reporter Alex Hayes noted, "In January Cllr Coleman described some residents from the area, who emailed him angry at huge increases in parking charges, as 'hysterical' and 'over the top' in a council meeting.

http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/topstories/8901191.Coleman_calls_for_Government_to_kick_out_Gaddafi_squatters/

I imagine the councillor's prompt Pavlov's dog reaction (did Pavlov ever experiment with toads?) came from hearing the words "squatters" and "property" mentioned, rather than specific Middle Eastern or Maghrebi considerations (though he did once display his diplomatic flair by describing Middlesex University as a "crap" place which could "only attract foreign students". Middlesex rewarded him with an honorary degree). He is a former chair of Finchley Conservative Friends of Israel.

But the worthy councillor and London Assembly member could be treading on thin ice when he starts talking about people occupying homes they shouldn't and recommends eviction. I hear some Methodists in Barnet are asking whether a bachelor like Coleman on more than £100,000 a year plus generous expenses should really be living in a rent-controlled flat provided by their church.

If that seems mean, remember that Coleman's party is dedicated to raising council rents to something like "market" prices - absurdly high as these can be in London -and simultaneously putting a ceiling on housing benefits. Some local authorities have reportedly pre-booked south coast boarding houses for displaced families whom they will be obliged to re-house.

As for Brian Coleman, at a council meeting last year he called Grahame Park, Stonegrove Park and West Hendon estates "disgusting slums" - apparently oblivious that it was the Tories who'd built them, and await an interested private developer to regenerate them. Attacking "social housing", Coleman said "the market will decide".

The issue of Brian's flat also brings to mind the successful campaign which the London Evening Standard ran against Ken Livingstone's mayoralty, and a two-page spread "investigation" by Andrew Gilligan, attacking the mayor's senior Equality adviser Lee Jasper, under the heading "Ken's £117,000 aide lives in £90pw council house". That was a Victorian terraced house in Clapham owned by a housing association, where Jasper lived with his family.

http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-is-lee-jasper-row-really-about.html


If that was an issue, then I think Brian Coleman's low rent pad will be another.

http://davidhencke.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/scan_doc00026.pdf


Or maybe I am assuming too much consistency from the media.


Mayoral Marathon

I'VE received two different leaflets for the TUC march against the cuts, and for an alternative, on March 26. Besides the standard TUC one, which I hear is in short supply because so many are being distributed by activists, there's another focussing on the cuts in London and featuring a photo of Ken Livingstone, captioned "Join me on 26 March and let's tell Cameron, Osborne and Boris Johnson there is an alternative".

Inviting me to "Register your support for Ken", it bears the logos of several trade unions, including mine, and a web address www.unionstogether.org.uk/marchwithken.

For a moment I wondered why trade unions or anyone else should imagine that their members, or anyone concerned and angry over bankers' bonuses and council cuts, should need to know the former London mayor would be there on March 26 before deciding to join the demonstration.

Then I realised the campaign for next year's mayoral election has begun early, like a marathon starting for the Olympics. And (don't yawn) once again the front-runners are Ken, chosen by Labour, versus incumbent Boris Johnson. This event is more likely to test the endurance of the spectators than that of the participants.

Giving a flavour, the Tories have put out a picture of Ken's running mate Val Shawcross on what they claimed was an RMT picket line, supposedly conveying that Livingstone would take his orders from that nasty red Bob Crow and his union henchpersons. Not that Ken Livingstone who once said if he was a tube worker he would cross picket lines? Anyway, Labour supporters have established that the "picket line" in the picture was not outside a station and in support of a strike, but a protest outside City Hall against the closure of ticket offices. And to complete the picture they have produced a photograph of one Boris Johnson, before he was mayor, signing a petition on the same issue.

A case of the political adage that
"Those who are in forget what they said when they were out. And those who are out forget what they did when they were in".

Maybe it is not polite to remember some things.
And maybe it is mere co-incidence that the RMT is not one of the unions whose logo appears on that leaflet.

Talking of the tubes, a poster on the London Underground advertising the Iranian state-linked Press TV has led to controversy about politicians George Galloway and Ken Livingstone being on its payroll. Galloway we know about. He has disgraced Stop the War platforms by defending the Iranian regime. I can understand some friends agreeing to appear on Press TV because it gave them and their causes space which they weren't afforded by the BBC and other 'respectable' media. But Livingstone?

In the 1970s when Libyan money was channeled to Labour Herald, it might have been possible to plead ignorance or even argue it was going to a good cause, and for good motives. But now? Does Livingstone need the money or the exposure? And how can he or anyone else ignore the calls from left-wing Iranians and trade unionists to break the link, which they say assists the regime responsible for their oppression and exile?

I don't accept the crude abuse from Tory twits like Toby Young in the Telegraph who demands that Ed Milliband sack Livingstone for being "the spokesman of a fascist regime". And I like the counter-attack some have launched against Boris Johnson for accepting Press TV money for advertising on the London Underground (though I would not like to give Johnson or other Tories the precedent for deciding what ads are acceptable, being old enough to remember when I first came to London and a poster advertising the Labour Sunday Citizen was banned from the tube stations as too 'political').

I would hope the Standard's Andrew Gilligan does not get dragged into this criticism of Livingstone, as he happens to moonlight for Press TV among other things.

All the same, though I see Livingstone has said he won't have time to work for Press TV as the mayoral election draws nearer, I can't see this issue dying down, and nor should it be allowed to. I'm not satisfied with the explanation Ken Livingstone has offered so far, in which he claims Press TV is just a British company and independent of the Iranian regime. Perhaps he and other MPs could prove their integrity by making a statement in support of Iranian political prisoners and trade unionists. He could even read it on Press TV if he likes.

http://torytroll.blogspot.com/2011/01/ken-livingstone-associates-with-more.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/davehillblog/2011/jan/19/ken-livingstone-andrew-gilligan-presstv

Old wounds, and the war of the cartoons

EVENING STANDARD, 28 October 1982.
The GLC responded by banning advertising in the Tory paper. Is the Standard still making Ken Livingstone pay for this punishment?

I'M going to vote tomorrow for who should be Mayor of London, and for assembly members, and while I have little enthusiasm for either the institution or the candidates, I am going to vote to defend what I have (my Freedom Pass! No I don't trust Boris' "guarantee"), and against the Tories and the racists.

I'm not keen on Ken, still less on his cabal of advisers (if you ask me they're more like masons than Marxists, whatever the press pretends). I don't like his preoccupation with boosting a Muslim cleric or defending the killers of Jean Charles de Menezes. But it's best to have Livingstne and Labour in, if we want to criticise from the Left and develop a working class socialist alternative.

Sad to say, the Left, even those who managed to get together for Greg Tucker's funeral the other week and will be marching together for May Day, will be all over the show when it comes to voting tomorrow. The official TUC to Morning Star left is sticking with Livingstone, for fear of something worse. Then there's Lindsey German and the Left List, only recently with Galloway in Respect; there's Alan Thornett's Socialist Resistance still in Respect but eyeing the Greens and recommending their Sian Berry as second choice; and there's a list from the Communist Party of Britain and sister parties, for old time's sake. Some people tell me it's the working class that is "confused", and what's more, they are going to provide us with leadership
That's when they have talked to each other, which they haven't even got round to doing before this election.

But I can say something about the reactionary attack on Livingstone, and where it is coming from. It started before some of the electorate voting tomorrow were born. Take the conflict over the cartoons. After Ken referred the other day to Boris' remarks about "picaninnies" (in that organ of upper-class twittery, the Spectator), Boris came back with a claim that Ken had published "antisemitic cartoons" in the paper he ran.

If that was alluding to the long-defunct Labour Herald, which was Ken Livingstone and Lambeth council leader Ted Knight's paper back in the 1980s, I used to read it, and even on occasion wrote for it, but I don't remember it carrying any antisemitic cartoons. I do flatter myself that I have a better eye for such things than the Member for Henley on Thames. It did carry a cartoon that is supposed to have upset the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It depicted Menachem Begin, then the prime minister of Israel, prancing in Nazi uniform after the massacres of Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila camps. A bit crude, perhaps, a bit offensive, maybe even unfair insofar as the precise responsibility for the massacres lay with Defence Minister Ariel Sharon who unleashed the Christian fascists ("Israel's 'Ukrainians'" as an Israeli friend of mine, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, dubbed the killers, in a historical allusion). But not half as offensive as the massacres which occasioned the cartoon.

I remember hearing a real antisemite, a National Front supporter, rejoicing at the massacres, and laughing about how the Israelis had "stood and watched", and having to resist my impulse to punch his face because I'd have lost my job. I remember the big demonstration of revulsion in Israel, and the protests and commemorations we held here. But I don't remember what the Board of Deputies said. As for antisemitism, the only people I remember blaming the Lebanon war on Jews were the Tory MP Toby Marlow and the Tory Daily Express, now fiercely anti-Muslim, but then showing devastation in Beirut with a comment blaming American Jews. I don't think the Board of Deputies noticed, being too busy avidly perusing and pursuing Labour Herald.

But talking of controversial cartoons, reminds me of the one by Jak, in the London Evening Standard, with which I've illustrated this column. It depicts a supposed poster for a horror film called "The Irish", billed as "the ultimate in psychopathic horror". It was published on 29 October, 1982, that's not long after the Labour Herald cartoon of Begin. The Standard man did not bother with insulting this or that leader, but just "the Irish" would do. Try imagining if some paper at the time of the Lebanon war, or back in the 1940s when Jewish terrorists were blowing up British soldiers and officials (and Arab buses) in Palestine, had carried something attacking "the Jews". Some people did attack Jews in Britain back then. They were Mosleyite fascists.
(but let's not bring up the Rothermere press earlier infatuation with Mosley and his Blackshirts).

After protests by the Irish in Britain Representation Group to the Greater London Council's Ethnic Minorities' Unit the GLC decided to withhold advertising from the unrepentant Evening Standard. As Ken Livingstone said:
"The clear message of the cartoon is that the Irish, as a race and as a community, are murderous, mindless thugs...I do not believe in free speech for racists...We will not put another penny into the Standard while they continue to vilify the Irish."
(quoted in 'Nothing But the Same Old Story: the roots of anti-Irish racism', 1984).

The GLC had been spending about £100,000 a year on its advertising with the Standard. That was quite a lot of money the paper lost as a result of that cartoon. I'm not saying it's the only reason they have got it in for Ken Livingstone, or why they planted a reporter to doorstep the mayor coming out of a party late one cold night, so he could be insulted; nor for them backing Boris Johnstone. But, just as with the treatment Livingstone has come to expect from the Zionists and the Board of Deputies, on which I've commented before, these things do run deep.

Mayor's Tale

"Roubles will Open up the British Road"

LONDON'S Mayor Ken Livingstone is set to announce an exciting plan to make this old seat of Empire a Fun City for the World.


Among the radical innovations is a plan to close the busy North and South Circular roads to traffic and join them into a motor racing circuit. The plan will involve diverting more traffic out to the M25, and some relocation of homes, but the Mayor's team say any problems will be more than offset by the increased visitor attraction and the revenue this will bring.

The road racing plan was foreshadowed two years ago when Ken Livingstone, flush with promises to save the environment with congestion charge, closed off parts of the West End one Tuesday evening for a Formula One show. The mayor told reporters then the capital could host a Formula One Grand Prix by 2007. Shrugging off worries about disruption, he said he had been discussing the idea with Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone for some time.
"It would probably bring two million people to London and we're really up for it," Livingstone said.

About 500,000 people saw eight F1 cars drive on a course laid out between Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus. The event had to be cut short because of the large numbers of people attending. But Livingstone said the capital could easily handle the organisation required for a race. "These things can easily be managed as long as you plan properly, and nobody ever questioned Bernie Ecclestone's planning abilities."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/3870639.stm

With the turn to racing round the suburbs, Livingstone's team predict the economy will gain. "We are reaping in the roubles from Russian investors already," said the Mayor's economic adviser John Gross, "and competing for more from the Middle East. The really hot money is always looking for new places to invest. London is like a laundry - you have to keep stuff going round before it's ready to take out."
"He means traffic", whispered an aide.

One-time leftie agitator Gross spent some years in Russia watching privatisation getting sway. Now he says "Business used to worry when we had the docks, and we had Jack Dash. Now docklands is for rich yuppies and we're making sure that we, I mean Londoners, get the dosh".

His optimism was seconded by Transport policy adviser Redrum O'Deal.
"We had complaints about congestion charge from West End businesses, though people driving their four-by-fours from Chelsea and Chiswick should have seen we were easing the streets by pricing the chavs on to the crowded tube. But with this, we won't have to worry about disrupting the centre or paying out large sums in compensation to anybody. You might get some nimbys - "not in my back yard", but let's face it, out in Neasden they are used to petrol fumes and planning blight, and anyway the property values aren't so high."

To counter anticipated moanings from environmentalists and what my informant called "boring old farts in the unions who keep moaning we're for the rich", a keen supporter of the mayor's policies, Marvin Gulliver, is to write a pamphlet enthusiastically setting out the benefits of the racing plan. Friends are calling him "Pitstop Bob".

As I was leaving City Hall last night I heard a jolly carousing chorus clearly rejoicing over the plan they would announce, with a song they are calling "The Chequered Flag":
.
"When Londoners cried out for homes,
We gave them a millennium Dome,
And while commuters had a moan,
We talked with Bernie Ecclestone,
Developers can build on high!
We'll raise our salaries to the sky!
Our streets like rags will reek of oil,
The checquered flag for sons of toil!

As I was leaving I nearly collided with a red-faced balding but familiar looking man mumbling something about newts. He weighed me up, and asked:
"Didn't you use to be a Butlin's redcoat?"
I assured him I had not, but he said"Well, you're still in it for the money. Just like the rest of us."
Turning to a cleaner he told him to work harder "Or you can go back and see how you like it under the Ayatollahs!" The butt of his jibe stammered that he was from Ireland, not Iran, but by then the mayor had gone.

(with thanks for additional material from Avril Furst).

Holocaust survivor comes under attack

as reactionary witch-hunt comes home


HENRY Guterman didn't agree with Guardian writer Chris McGreal's article comparing Israel with Apartheid South Africa. In a letter to the paper on 12 February, 2006, Henry said he was surprised McGreal could "insult millions of Black South Africans who suffered under a true Apartheid regime, by comparing it with what is happening in Israel/Palestine". Pointing out differences, the Jewish letter writer wondered whether the Guardian's Israel Correspondent was writing from "ignorance of the facts" or worse.

You might think supporters of the State of Israel would be glad to have someone like octogenarian Henry battling for the facts, as he sees them, but there's little gratitude in these circles, and even less rachmones, compassion or generosity of human spirit, for those who don't stay in line.

Henry Guterman is a Holocaust survivor with long service to the Jewish community's organisations and promoting inter-faith dialogues. He is no anti-Zionist campaigner or signer of petitions criticising Israel or supporting Palestinian rights. Indeed, as we have seen, he writes to complain about an attack on Israeli society that he considers unfair and ill-judged. But this isn't enough to save him when the witch-hunt comes to town.

"Guterman not spokesman, says council", reported Estelle Beninson in the Jewish Chronicle this week. "Senior members of the Jewish community this week moved to distance themselves from remarks made by Henry Guterman, a former president of the Manchester Jewish Representative Council. Mr Guterman, who is a member of the council executive, appeared at a Unite Against Fascism meeting in London on February 18 with London Mayor Ken Livingstone, whose suspension for likening a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard is pending a judicial review.

" In addition, he was quoted in the local press denying that the mayor was antisemitic or anti-Israel. On Tuesday, Louis Rapaport, president of the JRC, issued the following official statement: "We, the honorary officers of the Jewish Representative Council, have resolved to make it clear that Henry Guterman does not represent this council and the views he expresses are entirely personal. He does not have any authority to speak or write on behalf of the community, except within the interfaith organisations where he has been elected to office."

Those of us who take part in anti-racist activity and join campaigns opposing Nazi Holocaust deniers and the BNP will not be over-surprised by this. We have grown used to not seeing any representatives of "mainstream" Jewish organisations on anti-Nazi platforms, not because they were not invited, but because with rare and honourable exceptions like Henry Guterman, the official "representatives" of the community do not want to know.

It was Henry Guterman's friends in Unite Against Fascism and similar groups who opposed French fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen when he was invited to the Manchester area, just as it was they who organised the demonstration last year when Jewish graves in West Ham cemetery were vandalised. It was the left-wing anti-fascists and trades unionists who protested at the BNP being allowed to invade a Holocaust memorial ceremony in Oldham with the connivance of Greater Manchester Police. What happened to the Board of Deputies' complaint?

But some self-appointed Jewish spokespersons are not satisfied with separating themselves from Henry Guterman. As the JC report continues:
"Mr Guterman, who is co-chairman of the Muslim Jewish Forum and co-chairman of Manchester Council of Christians and Jews, was criticised this week by Dr Irene Lancaster of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, who is also an interfaith and academic advisor to Anglicans for Israel. Dr Lancaster called for Mr Guterman's removal as an executive member of the Manchester Jewish Representative Council and as vice-chair of local CCJ, saying:
"In the wake of many events which have hurt and harmed the Jewish community in the UK and abroad, it is of the greatest importance that Jewish people on representative bodies represent the community in word and deed. To appear on a platform with this man when he was being investigated by the appropriate authorities is the behaviour of someone who does not represent our community.

"Members of the Jewish community who seek to defend Ken Livingstone have forfeited the right to hold office on representative bodies," she added. "

Ironically as it may seem, it was left to Lucille Cohen of the Zionist Central Council to defend Henry Guterman and pay tribute to his record of combatting fascism. Indeed. We might wonder how Mrs.Lancaster's record would compare?

It just goes to show inadequate "Zionist" is as a term for some of the reactionaries now plaguing Jewish life. I'd guess Ms.Cohen is of the old school who thought Zionism could go with genuine belief in democracy and the rights of fellow-Jews. Apparently Dr.Irene Lancaster, honorary fellow of Manchester University's Jewish Studies Centre, is a self-claimed Orthodox Jew who spends much of her time berating hapless Anglicans for "betraying the Jews" every time some cleric ventures to suggest there is something immoral about Israeli occupation policies and repression.

It is an old saying that "a people that enslaves another forges its own chains".
We can now add that even Diaspora communities whose leaders support repression can find themselves expected to repress critical thought and obediently murmur "amen" to whatever brutality, bullying and balony is being perpetrated in their name.


A FABLE FOR OUR TIME -
AGAIN UNFORTUNATELY

JAMES THURBER, the great American humourist, wrote this little story at the time of the Cold War and McCarthy witch-hunts in the United States. Did we think those days were over?

As the 82-year old Holocaust survivor Henry Guterman find himself attacked by "representatives" of the community he has loyally served, and as 17-year old Israeli army refusenik and ant-Wall campaigner Matan Cohen lies in hospital after being hit in the eye with a rubber bullet, I hereby reproduce one of James Thurber's Fables for Our Time:

The Peacelike Mongoose

In cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn't want to fight cobras or anything else. The word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn't want to fight cobras. If he didn't want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras.

'Why?' asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went around that the strange new mongoose was not only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions of mongoosism.

'He is crazy,' cried the young mongoose's father.
'He is sick,' said his mother.
'He is a coward,' shouted his brothers.
'He is a mongoosexual,' whispered his sisters.

Strangers who had never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him crawling on his stomach, or trying on cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoosia.

'I am trying to use reason and intelligence,' said the strange new mongoose.
'Reason is six-seventh of treason,' said one of his neighbours.
'Intelligence is what the enemy uses,' said another.

Finally the rumour spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and he was tried, convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.

Moral: Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
if the enemy doesn't get you, your own folks must!

A Tale of Two Cities

1) The Big Smoke won't cloud real issue

LONDON's mayor Ken Livingstone is still in office, a high court judge having halted his suspension, hours before it would have taken effect. The stay of execution represents a partial victory, as Mayor Livingstone seeks a judicial review of last week's decision by the Adjudication Panel for England, the government body supposed to deal with serious disciplinary cases involving local government, over complaints that he offended an Evening Standard reporter who accosed him outside a party.

The case is unlikely to be heard for several weeks. Without the stay of execution, Livingstone would have been obliged to step down today.
The decision of the unelected panel to remove the elected mayor from office for a month was widely criticised. During his suspension the mayor would have been unable to perform duties relating to policing, transport and the Olympics.

Accusing the Evenin Standard of censoring swearing by their reporter from their recording of the exchange, Ken Livingstone also pointed to the way the Board of Deputies of British Jews had seen the case as an opportunity to have a go at him over his criticisms of Israel.

"Some time before this incident was blown out of all proportion the Board of Deputies asked to meet me to urge me to tone down my views on the Israeli government ... I think they saw this as an opportunity for them to try and hush me on it. It hasn't worked".

As we have pointed out in this blog, the Board's moves came with an international campaign by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre condemning Livingstone as an "antisemite" because of his views on the Middle East. Jewish Londoners who wrote telling the US organisation it was wrong were ignored, just as Oslo's Jewish community was ignored when it tried to correct a Simon Wiesenthal Centre report about events in Norway. Rich Uncle in America knows what's good for us.

Many Jewish people, even those who don't share Livingstone's views, are unhappy at the way the Board has lent itself to the campaign, and been instrumental to efforts to dislodge an elected mayor. They say it was at least ill-judged and out of proportion to the supposed offence.

There was supposed to be a demonstration against Ken Livingstone when he spoke at the Hackney Empire last night. It had been thought some of the characters who demonstrated last November against the "Skies Are Weeping" concert might turn out. But maybe the weather was too cold for the Zionists, or having prematurely assumed a victory courtesy of the Adjudication Panel, they had laid their "indignation" to rest. Inside the theatre, after hearing Ken speak, the audience voted by something like two thirds that he should not have been suspended.

The singing star of the "Skies Are Weeping" concert did make a return appearance last night, albeit as a member of the public, contributing from the auditorium this time. In an e-mail to friends last night Deborah Fink writes:

"Well, I've just come back from a bit of BoD bashing which you may wish to hear about.I went to the Hackney Empire to join the counter demo to the demo against Ken. Alas (!) there was no demo against Ken, just people supporting him. Sarah Colborne (PSC) was there and we decided to go in.We sat at the front, but on the side. At the beginning, there was a majority vote that No, Ken should not have been suspended, (was on BBC London News, 10.30pm). At the end, we could ask questions on topics not already covered. Tactically, I then moved to the centre, by chance wearing my orange jumper (works every time!). I said something along the lines of this:

'To return to the issue of Ken's suspension, I would like to say this for the record, and for the press. I am a Jew. You may be aware that the Board of Deputies of British Jews made the initial complaint against Ken. The Jewish community did not elect the BoDs. They do not speak on behalf of most of us. Their agenda, as with the Chief Rabbi, seems to me, to act as an extension of the Israeli Embassy. They seem to want to get rid of Ken as he continually criticises Israel. By continually crying wolf in regard to anti-Semitism, when there is real anti-Semitism, no one will care! Israel wants there to be anti-Semitism so all Jews move to Israel'....... Interrupted by and followed by round of applause".

Applause which I'll echo. I could not have put it better myself, Debbie.

Meanwhile in the Land of the Free...

2) The Big Apple turns sour on Rachel

Guardian

The flights for cast and crew had been booked; the production schedule delivered; the press announcement drafted and approved; tickets advertised on the internet. The Royal Court production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, the play I co-edited with Alan Rickman, was transferring next month to the New York Theatre Workshop, home of the groundbreaking musical Rent, following two sellout runs in London and several awards.

We always thought that it was a piece of work that needed to be seen in the US. Created from the journals and emails of American activist Rachel Corrie, telling of her journey from her adolescent life in Seattle, Washington, to her death under a bulldozer in Gaza at the age of 23, we considered it, in a sense, to be an American story, which would have a particular relevance for audiences in Rachel's home country. After all, she had made her journey to the Middle East in order "to meet the people who are on the receiving end of our [American] tax dollars", and she was killed by a US-made bulldozer.

But last week the New York Theatre Workshop cancelled the production - or, in their words, "postponed it indefinitely". The political climate, we were told, had changed dramatically since the play was booked. As James Nicola, the theatre's artistic director, said yesterday: "In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy situation." Rachel was to be censored for political reasons.

It makes you wonder. If a young, middle-class, scrupulously fair-minded, and dead, American woman, whose superb writing about her job as a mental health worker, ex-boyfriends, troublesome parents, struggle to find out who she wanted to be, and how she found that by travelling to Gaza and discovering the shocking conditions under which the Palestinians live - if a voice like this cannot be heard on a New York stage, what hope is there for anyone else? The non-American, the non-white, the non-dead, the oppressed?

I'd heard from American friends that life for dissenters had been getting worse - wiretapping scandals, arrests for wearing anti-war T-shirts, Muslim professors denied visas. But it's hard to tell from afar how bad things really are. Here was personal proof that the political climate is continuing to shift disturbingly, narrowing the scope of free debate and artistic expression. What was acceptable a matter of weeks ago is not acceptable now. The New York theatre's claim that the arrangement was tentative is absurd: the truth is that its management has caved in to political pressure, and the reputation of the arts in New York is the poorer for it.

Surely Americans will not put up with this censorship
Katharine Viner, Guardian, Wednesday March 1, 2006

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1720592,00.html

Deborah Fink has written to the Guardian in her capacity as Project Director for the 'The Skies are Weeping', expressing sympathy for Katherine Viner and her co-workers, and noting that Philip Munger's cantata for Rachel Corrie which was the centre-piece of the concert was premiered in London after threats to performers forced the composer to cancel it in his home city, Anchorage, Alaska.

But in case we Brits feel too smug about US censorship, it's worth quoting the subscript Debbie aded to her letter, for the Guardian's editor:

"As the Guardian did not cover the concert, (and rejected an article on it), I feel it could partially compensate by publishing this! (Had the Guardian written something about the concert in advance, more people would have come which would have helped cover our costs)".

Explaining the strange game of politics in London

Among Mike Marqusee's distinctions is that he is an American who understands cricket. A native New Yorker who lives in London, he not only enjoys the game, but writes about it (and about Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, socialism, the anti-war movement, and other topics).
Mike is good at getting into stuff that others find complicated, and helping us understand what's going on.

A couple of years ago I heard Mike give a report on the anti-war movement in the United States, in its diversity, and more recently he has been explaining British life and politics for readers of The Hindu, India's leading daily. I only wish readers here in Britain were as well-served. Here's Mike' s take on recent events in London, for his Indian readers:-.

**********************************

The news that the elected Mayor of London was to be suspended from office for a month at the direction of an appointed tribunal startled Londoners, partly because few had any idea that there existed a body with the power to overturn their democratic preference, and partly because the penalty seemed so disproportionate to the alleged offence.

The tribunal ruled that Livingstone had been "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" to a Jewish journalist who approached him outside a private party in February last year. When the journalist identified himself as working for the Evening Standard, a long-time nemesis of the London Mayor, Livingstone chided him: "What did you do? Were you a German war criminal?" The reporter said he was Jewish and that he found the remarks offensive. Livingstone then told him he was acting "like a concentration camp guard -- you are just doing it because you are paid to."

The background here is that the right-wing Standard, London's biggest-selling daily paper, has been engaged in battle with the left-wing Livingstone, London's most popular politician, for a quarter of a century. The Standard is owned by Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, which opposed Jewish immigration in the early years of the twentieth century and championed Hitler in the 1930s. Since then, it has waged inflammatory campaigns against black and Irish people, and more recently against asylum seekers and Muslims.

When the story broke, Livingstone was accused of boorishness, insensitivity towards holocaust victims, and even anti-semitism. He was asked to apologise but refused, basically arguing that he had every right to be rude to a journalist working for this particular organisation. On the question of the alleged offence to Jewish people, he said:
"I have been deeply affected by the concern of Jewish people in particular that my comments downplayed the horror and magnitude of the holocaust. I wish to say to those Londoners that my words were not intended to cause such offence and that my view remains that the holocaust against the Jews is the greatest racial crime of the 20th century."

For some reason, that plain-spoken statement was not good enough for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who made a formal complaint to the local government watchdog. Now that this complaint has resulted, a year later, in Livingstone's suspension from office, many commentators shocked by the severity and undemocratic nature of the penalty nonetheless blame Livingstone for bringing it on himself by his refusal to apologise. That seems a perverse interpretation of events. It was the determination of the Board of Deputies to lay the matter before the statutory authorities that led to London being deprived of its elected Mayor for four weeks.

Just weeks before Livingstone's contretemps with the Evening Standard journalist, Prince Harry was photographed wearing Nazi regalia at a private party (guests had been asked to dress in "colonial or native" attire). In contrast to its aggressive pursuit of Livingstone, the Board of Deputies adopted an emollient approach to the third in line to the throne. "It was clearly in bad taste," said a spokesperson for the Board, but he added that the young royal had apologised and so there was no more to be said. When it was revealed, shortly after the Livingstone incident, that senior Daily Mail executives had donned Nazi costumes at a fancy dress party held in 1992, the Board said it was "not an issue at this moment in time". However, it did find the time and energy to denounce Interpal, a prominent Palestinian charity, as a "terrorist organisation". As a result of an out-of-court settlement following a libel action, the Board was forced to retract the charge and apologise for making it.

Recently, the Board joined the Chief Rabbi in condemning the decision of the Church of England to withdraw its £2.5 million investment in Caterpillar, the US-based corporation that manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinian homes and farms. "The timing could not have been more inappropriate," the Chief Rabbi argued, because Israel at this moment found itself "facing two enemies, Iran and Hamas". The Caterpillar decision, he warned, would have "the most adverse repercussions on ... Jewish-Christian relations in Britain."

And here the agenda becomes increasingly obvious. It's not about protecting the rights of Jews in Britain; it's about protecting Israel from scrutiny and protest. The aim is to muddy the waters – and the reputations of critics of Israel like Livingstone - with charges of anti-semitism. In his denunciation of the Church's stand on Israel, the Chief Rabbi drew no distinction whatsoever between Jews as a whole and Israel as a state. Worse yet, he identified Jews in Britain with some of the most inexcusable policies of a particularly abhorrent Israeli government. I'm far from being the only Jew in Britain who finds these equations anti-semitic, whether they come from Iran's Ahmadinejad, Malaysia's Mahathir or those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews.

The British media treat the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies as the authentic (and exclusive) representatives of Jews in Britain, despite the fact that neither is elected by or accountable to the Jewish community as a whole. The Chief Rabbi heads the Orthodox Synagogues, to which a minority of Jews are affiliated. He can make no claims on behalf of Reform, Chasidic, Sephardic or non-synagogue affiliated Jews. The Board of Deputies is a self-perpetuating collection of worthies and it's safe to say that 90% of British Jews have no idea how they're chosen.

Neither the vendetta against Livingstone nor the diatribe against the Church of England have served the real interests of Britain's diverse Jewish population. The cheapening of the grave charge of anti-semitism has made it harder to oppose and expose the real thing, which certainly exists. The elevation of brutal Israeli realpolitik into an article of faith is a mockery of the ethical, universalist strand of Judaism that once flowed into revolutionary social movements around the world. It's not Livingstone, but the Board of Deputies that has shown disrespect for the memory of the holcoaust – by seeking to exploit it in pursuit of a parochial political smear-campaign.

In recent weeks, many Muslims have professed despair over the antics of the self-proclaimed champions of their community. I think I know just how they feel.

http://www.mikemarqusee.com/

It all depends who says it

BY mere coincidence, or bei mir bist du shein (if Professor Hirsh will allow the pun), the fall-out from the absurd decision to suspend London mayor Ken Livingston comes as the cord of rumors and allegations tightens around the neck of Tony Blair's Sports and Culture Minister Tessa Jowell.

Don't get alarmed, the minister has not insulted a newspaper reporter, as far as I know, so there's nothing to excite the Board of Deputies (not even of British Italians, if such existed). But as her husband, rich-persons solicitor David Mills prepares to face an Italian court, this time not as lawyer or witness but defendant, it is reported that Mrs.Mills signed a mortgage deal used as a cover for her husband to receive a £350,000 "gift" from Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

"On September 27, 2000 - in the middle of the Labour party conference - both Mills and Jowell signed a document taking out a large mortgage on their £700,000 terraced home in Kentish Town, north London. This money was then placed in an obscure hedge fund. The mortgage was paid off less than a month later with the Italian "gift". (Sunday Times, February 26)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2058985,00.html

Mills helped Berlusconi set up offshore funds to conceal the extent of his media holdings as well payments like those alleged. The lawyer has insisted he and his wife had entirely separate finances. Well, it's a change on "it's all in my wife's name".

But even with my quirky memory that irritates politicians, and amuses and exasperates my friends (where did I put my keys?), why should news about Livingston have put me in mind of Berlusconi?

Well, it's less than three years since the Italian PM, in his role as European Union president, shocked Euro MPs and caused a diplomatic row by telling German Social Democrat MEP, Martin Schultz who had said something about his use of immunity to avoid bribery charges:
"Mr Schulz, I know there is a producer in Italy who is making a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I will suggest you for the role of commandant. You'd be perfect."

Before his rise as billionaire property and media magnate, Berlusconi's jobs included singing on a cruise liner, but if he'd doubled as a comedian, Euro MPs were not amused by his jibe implying all Germans are Nazis. Martin Schultz might well have pointed out that his party suffered persecution by the Nazis, its members were sent to the camps, whereas Berlusconi appointed a "post-fascist", Gianfranco Fini as his Foreign Minister. (What kind of fascist is a "post-fascist"? One that dons a smart Italian suit).

It was not the first time Berlusconi had aired his ignorance and prejudice. Soon after the September 11 attacks he attacked Arabs and Muslim civilisation, saying Westerners should be proud of the "superiority of our civilisation" over Islam, which was "1,400 years behind". Berlusconi has never apologised.

In 1994, at a dinner of world leaders, then Russian president Boris Yeltsin complained that the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) was not helping Russia end the Chechnya conflict. Since Italy was chairing the CSCE, Berlusconi was asked to reply. He spoke for 25 minutes about Europe and war. After the meal was over he sidled up to Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez, and asked him: "What is the CSCE, anyway?"

According to Berlusconi himself, Gonzalez ended up splitting his sides on the floor laughing, and the Italian PM had to help him up.

Many people, particularly Italian Jews, were less amused by the interview Berlusconi gave the British Tory Spectator in September 2003. Discussing how the Iraqi people might need time to recover from 40 years of dictatorship, he was asked whether Italians had not had the same problem after fascism was defeated. He denied the comparison between dictators.. 'That was a much more benign dictatorship Mussolini did not murder anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them [banishment to small islands such as Ponza and Maddalena which are now exclusive resorts].'

It was not the first time. When first elected in 1994 he told reporters "Mussolini did some good things here". Tullia Zevi, a former leader of Italy's Union of Jewish Communities, told the New York Times in a telephone interview, "He said fascism was a very mild dictatorship! It was so 'mild' there were many political murders from the very beginning, and also for the Jews."

Mussolini used gas against Ethiopians long before Saddam Hussein tried it on Kurds. Italy's fascist regime adopted anti-Semitic race laws in 1938 depriving Jews of civil rights and leading to expulsion from schools and employment. These measures enabled the later deportation of thousands of Jews to the Nazi concentration camps. Mussolini publicly announced his agreement with the "Final Solution."

So how did Jewish organisations in other countries respond to Berlusconi's defence of Mussolini, his promotion of neo-fascists, or his "joke" comparing someone to a Nazi concentration camp guard? After all, Ken Livingstone's jibe to a reporter was enough to set off an international campaign, promoted by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, accusing London's mayor of being an antisemite, even though he publicly stated that he had not wished to offend Jewish people or make light of the Holocaust.

Well, the established organisation in the United States claiming to combat antisemitism, the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League(ADL), proceeded with inviting Berlusconi to its dinner on September 23, 2003, to proclaim him "European Statesman of the Year".

On the eve of the dinner, the New York Times published a letter signed by three Nobel laureates, economists Franco Modigliani, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calling the ADL award "shocking to anyone who knows Mr. Berlusconi's controversial history."

Several Jewish groups asked that the award be withdrawn. But just as American Zionists had ignored French Jewish protests when they invited Jean-Marie Le Pen in an earlier decade, ADL director Abraham Foxman dismissed complaints about Berlusconi as "politically laced", and went ahead with the award dinner.

It was quite an occasion. Among top media and business leaders present was Rupert Murdoch, who fondly recalled how Berlusconi had said he was "entering politics to save Italy from the communists". (Much as Winston Churchill once said praising Mussolini). Also among the guests was former US secretary of State Henry Kissinger. They gave Berlusconi two standing ovations. I don't know if he told any of his jokes.

As Foxman explained, justifying the award, Berlusconi had been a loyal friend of the United States in its war on Iraq when other European leaders hesitated. He admitted Berlusconi's recent comments were "inappropriate" and "uninformed," but "that's not enough for me to say he's no longer a friend." Besides, as Foxman told the Jewish Week, the Italian premier was a "good friend of Israel".. "He has spoken out that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism," Foxman said.

When Silvio Berlusconi went to the Middle East that year he refused to meet Yasser Arafat. Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas therefore declined the pleasure of meeting Berlusconi. But Ariel Sharon said the Italian PM was "Israel's best friend in Europe."

So, if Ken wants to win forgiveness from such leaders, all he has to do is apologise and - change his views on US war policies and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Not much to ask, is it?

.Wondering what, if anything, Britain's Board of Deputies had said about Berlusconi, I did a search, and found an item mentioning "football" and "Berlusconi". Thinking it must have something to do with Lazio player Paolo Di Canio, who keeps giving fascist salutes, to the delight of neo-Nazi fans and Berlusconi's coalition partners in the Alianza Nationale, I clicked on the item to see what it said, and read:
. .
"The Board of Deputies has written to European football's governing body to express its disapproval following the decision by UEFA not to allow Hapoel Tel Aviv to host their UEFA Cup quarter-final clash with Italian club AC Milan in Israel. The Israeli Government has condemned the decision coming, as it does, amid the growing crisis in Israel's tourist industry. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is also the owner of AC Milan, also supported Israel's stance and called for the tie to be staged in Israel".
http://www.bod.org.uk/bod/index.jsp?page=extra&address=press/press_artical.jsp&id=341

So let nobody say the Board of Deputies does not keep its eye on the ball.


see previous items on: Turn Again, Livingstone?
http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2006/02/turn-again-livingston.html

Mills and Berlusconi
http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2006/02/tonys-crony-berlusconi.html

Turn again Livingston?

WHILE there was a world campaign over supposed "offence" caused by London's mayor, Ken Livingston, it was left to socialists and Unite Against Fascism (hon.pres. one Ken Livingston) to organise this protest last year, uniting Jews, Muslims and other local people against massive desecration of Jewish graves in London's West Ham cemetery.

Late at night on February 8 last year a 60-year old man stepped out of City Hall in London, where he had been attending a party held by Gay and Lesbian staff, and was waylaid by a reporter asking him how the party had gone.

Whether it had been a long day or short drinks, Mayor Ken Livingston (for it was he) did not wish to be interviewed, and in the course of indicating this, asked the Evening Standard reporter if he had been "German war criminal". The reporter, Oliver Finegold replied that he was Jewish, and offended by that.

Livingston: "Ah right, well you might be [Jewish], but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren't you?

Finegold: Great, I have you on record for that. So, how was tonight?

Livingston: It's nothing to do you with you because your paper is a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots.

Finegold: I'm a journalist and I'm doing my job. I'm only asking for a comment.

Livingston: Well, work for a paper that doesn't have a record of supporting fascism.

With that the mayor walked off, and the journalist said something off-record..

As a result, elected Mayor Livingston is to be suspended (on full pay) for four weeks from March 1, by order of a non-elected Adjudication Panel, after the local government standards commission had only recommended a reprimand. He faces £80,000 in costs, but may appeal. The case arose from a complaint by the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

There is quite an irony in this. As a spokesperson for the mayor was able to point out after the exchange became public a few days later, the Evening Standard is owned by the same firm as the Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers, whose founders were notorious admirers of Hitler fascism.

"In the 1930s Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail were supporters of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Rothermere wrote an article, 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts', in January 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his 'sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine', and the paper published articles lamenting the number of German Jews entering Britain as refugees after the rise of Nazism.

"Rothermere had several meetings with Adolf Hitler, and addressed him as 'My Dear Fuhrer' in letters and telegrams. He argued that the Nazi leader wanted peace, and in 1934 campaigned for the African land confiscated in the Versailles Treaty to be returned to Germany".

In the 1980s the Greater London Council, which KenLivingstone headed till it was abolished by Margaret Thatcher, decided to boycott the Evening Standard over its use of offensive cartoons depicting "the Irish" as all terrorists, and black people as savage cannibals.

In recent years the Mail has employed Jewish journalists (including the awful 'neo-con' admiring columnist Melanie Philips, "Mad Mel" as my friends call her), while following the tradition of its anti-Jewish refugee attacks with front-page stories attacking asylum seekers. On Britain's first official Holocaust memorial day there was a demonstration outside the Mail and Standard offices in Kensington, initiated by Jewish Socialists, and joined by refugee groups. When some anti-racist campaigners sought to repeat this the following year they were met by a counter-demonstration defending the Mail organised by the British National Party.

Mayor Livingston has not avoided connections with the Standard, which is London's only evening newspaper. London Underground co-operated with Associated Newspapers in distributing the free Metro paper at tube stations, and the mayor himself supplemented his not inconsiderable salary with earnings as a restaurant columnist.

Oliver Finegold could have accusedLivingstone of inconsistency. He could have complained to the National Union of Journalists - if he is a member - about the Mayor insulting him. While he was at it he could perhaps have criticised his employers for making him hang around outside City Hall on a cold February night in the hope of catching an off-guard remark from Livingston.

Maybe. But the remark "Great, I have you on record for that". suggests a man who, offended or not, felt he had got a result as a newspaperman.

(For anyone who has been worried about coming to London by fears of crime, racism, rip-off prices and terrorism, it must be reassuring to learn we have so little happening here a reporter is assigned to cover the mayor's social life).

In response to criticism, Livingston made clear that he had not wished to offend members of the Jewish community or to in any way belittle the racist crime of the Nazi Holocaust.

On February 22 2005, he was able to get back at suggestions he had made light of it by reports of something that had happened at a party in Associated Newspapers' own house.
"Ken Livingstone today wrote to the editors of the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard - both owned by Associated Newspapers - asking them to apologise for an incident in which senior Associated Newspaper staff appeared at a Daily Mail party dressed in Nazi uniforms. The revelations about the Nazi uniforms worn at the party were made in national newspapers this week, and a statement issued by Associated Newspapers yesterday confirmed that members of staff had attended the party in Nazi uniform. The mayor's letter came following demands from both newspapers, including an editorial in today's West End Final of the Evening Standard, that the mayor apologise for remarks made to an Evening Standard reporter.

In his letter to the editor of the Evening Standard, Veronica Wadley, the mayor said:
'Which may be taken as infinitely more offensive - my remarks or the appearance of five members of Associated Press staff in Nazi uniforms? If you consider I should apologise for my remarks why have you therefore not demanded that Associated Newspapers apologise for this event?
'In the press statement by Associated Newspapers it states that the former editor of the Daily Mail, Sir David English, considered this incident as in "bad taste". Why were those involved not asked to leave? Why were they not asked to apologise? Why was no disciplinary action taken against them? I assure you that if any member of my staff were to appear in Nazi uniforms they would be instantly dismissed. It is also still not clear if any of those present at the party, including those who wore Nazi uniform, are still on the staff of Associated Newspapers.'
(press release)

But the Zionist-dominated Board of Deputies has never forgiven Livingston for his support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. They blamed him for a cartoon in Labour Herald depicting Menachem Begin in Nazi uniform.

When the GLC announced a programme to assist ethnic minorities in London for an "anti-racist year", the Board announced that Jews wanted nothing to do with it. Hearing then that several Jewish groups had already applied for grants, the Board offered to vet applications. Some Orthodox Jews said the Board had no business deciding for them, and GLC proceeded without the Deputies' advice. Among its grants, unforgivable in the eyes of Tories and Zionists alike, was one to the Jewish Socialists' Group.

This was used for the Jewish Cultural and Anti-Racist Project (JCARP), fostering Diaspora culture, links with other minorities, and anti-racist campaigning. Not on the surface a directly "anti-Zionist" programme, except it ran right against Established interests and Zionist priorities.

Some years later, when the GLC had been abolished and Livingston was sitting in parliament, I had a phone call from someone wondering if I'd be willing to help with a book about Ken Livingston. Flattered though I was, I confessed that I'd only very briefly met Livingston once, and knew nothing about him that had not appeared in the newspapers. My friendly go-between then explained that the would-be author had been given access to Board of Deputies files, and seeing my name in connection with Labour Herald, thought I might know something about it.

Maybe I should have gone along for a free lunch, and to find out what they had in those Deputies files. But, much as I'd become critical of Livingston (not least for his accusation that comrades of mine were "MI5 agents"!), I had no inside information and besides, what sort of writer was being assisted by the Board of Deputies?

I have not seen the promised book, but when Livingston stood in 2000 for the newly-created post of London Mayor, newspapers received a dossier of stale material about him from the Board of Deputies. So far as a majority of Londoners were concerned, being opposed by Thatcher and Tony Blair was an accolade, and the Board's 'dirt' made no difference. The one-time "Red Ken" was elected twice, in 2000 and 2004, but still they try.

Some Jewish officials have alternated between claiming "deep offence" to the entire Jewish community and saying Livingston could have avoided the row if he apologised to the reporter (ignoring his apology if any offence was caused to Jewish people). But the Board has been joined in this recent campaign by the more strident voice of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Demanding that Livingston "Apologise Now for Antisemitic and Anti-Israel Comments", the well-funded SWC persuaded some US mayors to announce they would have nothing to do with London's mayor. Its international campaign accusing Livingston of "fuelling" antisemitic attacks has been echoed by some Zionist websites, outraged that the mayor not only insulted a Jewish reporter but "slandered Ariel Sharon" (as though the mayor said anything worse about Sharon than could be read in Israeli newspapers).

The Community Security Trust, whose stewards have often seemed more concerned with "protecting" Jewish events from subversive left-wing Jews than from right-wing antisemites, has claimed that antisemitic incidents increased after Livingston's remarks - as though anyone would have heard about the remarks except from the papers attacking Livingston, and the fuss aroused in the Jewish community.

If they were really worried about antisemitism, perhaps they should consider the possible effect on many Londoners, even those no longer fond of Livingston, on learning that their democratically elected mayor has been even temporarily removed from his office by an unelected three-man panel which few people had previously heard of; And that this was at the behest of two minority bodies, one of them American, and both of them largely taking their cue from Israeli policies.

Livingston's deputy mayor Nicky Gavron who temporarily takes over is Jewish, and the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Used to working with the mayor she has firmly rejected the accusation that he is anti-Jewish, and criticised the way he was suspended by an unelected body. Prominent Labour and trade union figures have also rallied behind Livingston. Having lost popularity in recent years through things like congestion charges, alienated a lot of left-wing support by his attitude to tube trade unions, and antagonised others by his ill-advised invitations (and over-paid advisers), Livingston might come out of all this smiling, as support returns.

Some Tory papers seem to have trained our so-called leaders when to bark and whom to bark at. They tell us when we are supposed to be "offended", as with the manufactured outrage last year over a poster cartoon of Michael Howard.

Many Jewish people disagree with the Board of Deputies's choice of friends as well as enemies. Many disliked Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' attempt to make Jewish-Christian relations in Britain supposedly depend on the Church of England synod reversing its decision to disinvest from Caterpillar (supplier of bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes). Leaders like these drag the community's name in dirt by associating it with obnoxious policies. They also increase the danger that having cried wolf so many times falsely accusing the wrong people, there will be nobody to speak, or listen, against real antisemitism. These leaders don't speak for us. It is time we made our own voices heard more loudly. .
. .