Jim on Gideon Falter.
Jim and his comrades in Solidarity are amongst those on the left who’ve kept their nerve during the recent Gaza crisis. While condemning Israel’s atrocities and attending protests against them they have not witheld their criticisms of the Islamists of Hamas. The Tendance approaches these issues through the lens of First International Marxism and the universalist humanism of Jean Jaurès rather than Trotskyism.i
In the Falter affair most people would have found it stretching credulity that the man just happened to be in Aldwych, an area dead at weekends, just to begin with.
Jim cited I note with interest CPB leading figure, a fellow North Londoner (she even knew my Primary School) who has opposed the Morning Star line on such issues. Meeting her once she expressed views on Galloway not far off the Tendance’s.
Tendance Coatesy 
I agree about the anti-semitism of what was said although I think it’s reasonable to view it in the light if how much pro-Israel views are regularly conflated with Jewishness. It’s a fairly clear case of unconsciousness anti-semitism from watching the video, the cop just didn’t know any better.
Why is Jim fixating on this? Brand differentiation. Labourism isn’t a cure for political sectarianism.
Eric
April 25, 2024 at 8:29 am
I have borne witness to the police preventing people of asian appearance from entering town centres during far-right protests. whether it right or wrong what the police did to him it standard police practice to keep people apart they worry might fall out. my point is that no one cares when police did this to asians and that seems to be a worst thing.
confused leftist
April 25, 2024 at 1:46 pm
So does that make what the cops siad about Falter OK?
Jim Denham
April 26, 2024 at 5:26 pm
Agree. Meanwhile Monster Raving Greenstein attacks ‘zionist’ Unite the union
https://x.com/Pabloite/status/1784119133832937905
Andrew Coates
April 27, 2024 at 11:27 am
I think the Police Officer misspoke. He meant ‘obviously Jewish’ which in the context of the march would have been provocative. There’s that old chestnut about. Not shouting ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre, and Falter was being provocative. The Police have a duty to uphold public order. Come the Glorious Day when there are thousands on the streets things will be different, but this wasn’t that.
Sue r
April 26, 2024 at 10:41 pm
So the leader of a campaign, ostensibly ‘against anti-Semitism’, goes to a march against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza in order to provoke an incident which he can frame as ‘anti-Semitic’, thereby – he hopes – discrediting the movement against the war on Palestine and deflecting attention away from Israel’s war crimes. It seems that his intended provocation failed to bear fruit, but he did get a copper to explain the police’s mission to keep rival protesters apart in a rather inept way, and his campaign has decided to run with that. It seems pretty obvious that Falter’s campaign, far from working against anti-Semitism, is deliberately seeking to foster it by staging provocations in a desperate attempt to rally support for Israel. It’s dangerous and divisive politics.
Francis
April 27, 2024 at 8:50 pm
I’m slightly older than you Francis and I can see a replay of virulent rows we had, from my North London comp onwards in the late sixties, on Israel. This time around we do not have the PLO but Hamas.
Andrew Coates
April 27, 2024 at 10:18 pm
Maybe. There are differences, though. Left Zionism as a current in Britain seems to have dwindled to almost nothing – in the past, some people used to try to make a positive ‘progressive’ case for Israel. Now almost all that remains is the negative case against Israel’s critics, based on the presupposition that they can only be motivated by anti-Semitism. On the other side, I don’t see the same positive enthusiasm on the British left for Hamas and suchlike Palestinian factions that there used to be for the PLO, if the slogans of the marches are anything to go by. British political Muslims may well be more pro-Hamas, but I don’t follow them at all closely.
Francis
April 27, 2024 at 11:38 pm
Some of the Islamists like MAB, have links through Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas. Others like 5 Pillars to the Iranian regime as do people like Williamson and Miller.
Those in the PSC do not criticise Hamas politics as such.
Andrew Coates
April 29, 2024 at 6:36 pm