On October 4, in Brighton, the Green Party of England and Wales voted by 1,022 to 813 that Zionism is to be “treated as any other form of racism”. It declared itself an antizionist party and committed to a single state in all of historic Palestine. The same conference rejected an amendment that would have stopped the policy being used to “pressure, proscribe or discipline” members because of their affiliation with synagogues and other Jewish community institutions.
The first vote defined as racism a belief that most British Jews hold. The second refuses to protect Jewish members from the consequences. The policy is to be implemented through the party’s anti-racism procedures.
A Jewish Green who belongs to a synagogue that prays for the State of Israel, as most British synagogues do, belongs to an institution her own party now treats as racist.
I am a Zionist. This is a statement that many people, Jews and non-Jews, use to mean many things. Underlying these different meanings though, is that Zionism is not a position on the West Bank, or a verdict on any Israeli government. It is the belief that the Jewish people, like every other people, have the right to self-determination, and that after the 20th century we need one place where that right is secure.
You can hold that belief and oppose the current Israeli government. Many Jews do. The Green policy draws no such distinction. It makes the belief itself into an act of racism.
The Greens were warned. In 2021 the party incorporated the IHRA working definition of antisemitism into its own guidance. That definition gives, as an example of antisemitism, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour. The party has now adopted that example as policy.
Before the vote, the chief executives of the Board, the Jewish Leadership Council and the CST wrote to the party’s leadership to say so. The party members went ahead anyway. By the IHRA examples they included, the Greens are now a racist party.
That is why Max Royston and I have tabled a motion asking the Board of Deputies to determine that the Green Party of England and Wales is a racist party. We did not use the phrase lightly. The Board has used it before. In 2009 Henry Grunwald KC, then president, wrote in this paper that “for the first time in my life, a racist political party may achieve a national electoral breakthrough”. He referred to the BNP, and the Board ran a national campaign against it.
In the 1970s the Board’s Defence Committee campaigned against the National Front. As a community, we should now stand up for the same beliefs, even as the political direction of the threat has changed.
Some will say the Board should express concern and stop short of a conclusion. I disagree. The Board exists to speak for British Jews to the institutions of this country, as citizens addressing our own political system. When a party with MPs, councillors and a rising vote adopts a platform that treats most of the community as racist, the community’s representative body should say plainly what that is. A hedged statement would also send a message, and it would be heard, by Jewish students, by Jewish councillors and by every Jewish member of the Green Party deciding whether to stay.
This is not the position of one wing of the community. Within hours of the vote, the leaders of the Movement for Progressive Judaism said the Green Party “has made antisemitism party policy and become a racist party”. Deputies and rabbis across the religious spectrum have told us they support the motion. They include people who are sharply critical of the Israeli government and people who are not. You do not need to agree about Gaza, settlements or anything else to agree that a party which defines your identity as racism has crossed a line.
The motion also asks something of the other parties. We call on every party to refuse to enter into or take part in any coalition or other arrangement with the Green Party of England and Wales, at local or national level, while it holds this position. No mainstream party would have shared power with the BNP. The test should be the same here.
A party cannot stand against antisemitism in its speeches and govern alongside a party that has made antisemitism its policy. We are asking Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and every other party to say now, before the next round of local deals, where they stand. This is particularly important should there be an early general election. We should ask all political parties to clearly reassure us that they will draw a line here, and not prioritise political expediency over anti-Jewish racism. Anything else is less than we, as British Jews, deserve.
Our motion also sets out a way back for the Greens. The party should rescind the policy, commission a full independent investigation into antisemitism in its ranks, and act on what it finds, including expelling those found to be racist. Many Green members voted against this policy, and some have resigned over it. The Board, and the Jewish community, should stand with them.
At the time of writing, the motion has been submitted through the Board’s processes. We hope it goes to the full Board plenary on October 25. We ask every Deputy to support it, and we ask members of the community to tell their Deputies what they think. It is a time that the Jewish community should write the right lines in its history.
Ashley Hirst is a deputy for the Ner Yisrael Community
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