Jeremy Corbyn's mother may indeed have been "at Cable Street with the Jews to stand against the Fascists" as Josh Glancy reported in last week's JC in his analysis of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour and the Jewish vote .
My paternal grandmother, who was a member of the British Socialist Party (which became one of the fragments of the Communist Party) in the East End before the First World War, might well have supported his candidature for the leadership of the Labour Party. She would perhaps be disappointed that I do not. I will be voting for Yvette Cooper as the candidate best equipped to persuade the electorate to support Labour as the party most likely to realise the aspiration for social justice which my grandmother espoused and I, like many others, have worked for in my 55 years as a party member.
That aspiration , Glancy implies, is less relevant to modern society than that shared by "the aspirational middle class", which is, he seems to suggest, essentially materialist and self-regarding. Perhaps he should spend some time in the Newcastle council ward I have represented for 48 years, where life expectancy is 12 years less than the nearby ward in which I live, where incomes are low, unemployment high, hundreds of households are hit by the bedroom tax and many more face hardship as the Government presses ahead with welfare reform.
There are certainly those on the left whose selective criticism of Israel is troubling but they are by no means alone. The moral relativism which singles out Israel for attack is to be found, as I see regularly, in the House of Lords.
The Government is ,rightly, strongly opposed to the Netanyahu government's settlement policies. To adopt a phrase with which we are familiar, "some of our best friends" are indeed to be found in the Conservative Party, but they are also to be found in the Labour Party. Those friends, like Ed Miliband, are rightly critical of Israeli government policy and the rise of the ultra-right whose departure from Jewish ethics was horribly illustrated last week . But they also oppose boycotts and the refusal of recognition of Israel's right to exist.
I will not be leaving Labour if Corbyn is elected as leader, though I am concerned his election will make it more difficult for Labour to win office and help to realise the age-old Jewish values of equity and social justice. We need to stem the rise in inequality which disfigures our society and denies to too many the ethical, as well as material, aspirations that those values have promoted. I, and many others, will seek to promote economic, environmental and social policies which reflect that tradition. Though the language may be a little melodramatic, we would in the words of Hugh Gaitskell, "fight and fight and fight to again to save the Party that we love", not out of sentiment or blind loyalty, but because that is what is best for Britain and, yes, for Israel.
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