Election reaction

[liv]

I woke up this morning to news of the Labour victory. Well, to be honest, I knew when I went to sleep last night that Labour were going to win, and really, I was pretty certain when I voted at 9 o'clock yesterday morning that Labour were going to win. And it's not exactly like I'd be dancing in the streets if the shambolic, unelectable band of racist scum calling themselves the Conservative party had defied all expectations by winning this election.

But what really socked me when I was woken by the radio this morning was hearing that George Galloway has taken Oona King's seat. Most politicians are lying, toadying, power-hungry demagogues; it's depressing, but that's human nature. However, Oona King is, I believe, a genuinely good person, and George Galloway is, frankly, actively evil. King is quite a bit to the left of Blair, so if the consituency wanted a socialist, why not a sane, dedicated, principled socialist rather than a nutter?

I'm just hoping that the people who voted for him were unaware of his violently antisemitic views. It's not something he emphasized in his campaign, unlike in the 70s when he was elected in Dundee on an overtly antisemitic platform, and very nearly drove the century-old Jewish community out of Dundee altogether, as well as inciting violence and nastiness which continues to this day. Perhaps people voted for him as a protest against the Blair government and the Iraq war. I can sympathize to a point. But, you know, people, he was thrown out of the Labour party for what amounted to treason. Not treason against the Labour party, actual treason against this country where he is now an MP again. Ugh.

All I can say is, at this moment I'm extremely glad that I have skills and qualifications which should make it easy for me to live anywhere in the world. And if rysmiel wants to hold forth about why democracy is a poor method of government, or indeed why Montreal is a wonderful place, at this particular moment I'm likely to be more than usually susceptible to such arguments.

Today is the 12^th day, making one week and five days of the Omer.

Comments

Re: Galloway and Antisemitism

[liv]

I completely take your point; I'm making pretty serious allegations against Galloway based on little more than hearsay. I'm afraid that most of what I know is in this post and the comments on it. Obviously, I wasn't even alive during the period I'm talking about, so I'm only going by what I've heard from other members of the Dundee Jewish community who lived through this.

Maybe one thing to do is ask them? I think the email address I set up for the community is still active: admin@dundeehebrewcongregation.port5.com, so you could try writing to them and say you're doing some research into the history of interactions between the political left and the Jewish community. I know people in Dundee have been helpful with similar enquiries in the past.

One thing I should clarify is that I think there's a bit of conflation of the community with the physical synagogue building here. I wasn't terribly clear about that myself, but anyway. Demolishing the old synagogue building was not Galloway's idea or anything to do with antisemitism; it was a purely economic issue, that the building was on prime commercial land and they wanted to build the Wellgate there. However, AIUI a faction within the council led by Galloway tried to deprive the Jewish community of compensation when their old synagogue was pulled down to make way for the Wellgate. I don't know the exact words that were said but people talk about an atmosphere where they didn't want Jews in Dundee anyway, let alone spending public money to help them when they'd only donate it to Israel anyway, that kind of thing.

Re: Galloway and Antisemitism

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this, that makes a lot more sense. I might try following that up with that email address.

Thing is, I can easily imagine a situation where there's a big gap between people's perceptions and what's actually being done, and where the resulting atmosphere doesn't necessarily represent the intentions of the protagonists. Still, it suggests at the very least that the matter was handled incredibly badly and without any consideration for the sensibilities of the Jewish community. And if they really were trying to deny them compensation, then that is disgusting and yes, anti-Semitic, and the "They'd only donate it to Israel" excuse is, well I don't need to tell you how pathetic it is. Mm. I should check this out, if it is not wholly lost in the midsts of time.

As to why people voted Respect - specifically in BG&B I presume you're talking about - I don't know. I hope that it was overwhelmingly Muslim anger at the war, which Oona King supported, rather than any anti-Semitic sentiment. Oona King was, after all, just as Jewish when she was elected with a huge majority in 2001.

Some Muslims (like some Christians and some non-religious folks) are undoubtedly anti-Semitic. I've experienced this directly - one Yemeni guy in a homeless residence I worked for a year told me he "smelt me out as a Jew" from the first day I was there, and was inclined to hold me and all Jews personally to blame for the actions of the Israeli state. And there were some anti-Semitic acts taking place in BG&B during the election campaign, though there's no evidence the culprits were associated with Respect. But when there's this sort of acrimonious campaign on, with OK being attacked heavily for her stance on the war, and when she happens to be Jewish, and when for a lot of Muslims the occupations of Iraq and Palestine are very much linked, that probably did give anti-Semitic elements an opportunity to play on those links and drum up hatred.

How much that was a factor for voters, I have no idea. I am quite sure that, whatever Galloway's attitude might be, that is not something that the vast majority of Respect activists would remotely want. The people I know in Respect loathe racism in all its forms. But it's entirely understandable for someone on the receiving end of this to be extremely suspicious of Respect as a whole, even if this was, as I firmly believe, an unintended consequence. There's a problem of "asymmetric information" here - people in Respect may know that they are not anti-Semitic, but people outside cannot be sure of that. The campaign in BG&B could probably have done more to counter this impression, but then they weren't exactly getting a fair crack of the whip in the media, so messages were not necessarily getting through on a national level.