If you were feeling a bit overpowered by the whiff of hypocrisy coming off the large number of Tory MPs, and their DUP friends, including Norman Tebbit and Ian Paisley Jr, who joined the “anti-racist” protest against Jeremy Corbyn in Parliament Square last Monday, to say “enough is enough” about alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party, then I would strongly advise you to be very careful where you travel in Europe.

In particular, I would recommend that you avoid Strasbourg and Brussels where you might find yourself inadvertently hanging out with Tory MEPs, and their close friends, who certainly have a whiff of something unpleasant about them.

At David Cameron’s behest in 2009, Tory MEPs left the centre-right grouping they had formerly been part of to form a new, more right-wing alliance. The Tories are the largest group in that 72-member alliance, the next biggest faction being the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS). Yes,you have heard of them. They made headlines lately with their new law which is attempting to rewrite Holocaust history. They are making it illegal to suggest any complicity by Poles in the genocide of Jews during the war.

As the ruling party in Poland they are also trying to rehabilitate the honour of the ultra-nationalist, antisemitic, right-wing Polish parties active before the war. Hot on the heels of the controversial Holocaust history bill, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki lit a candle and laid a wreath at the Munich grave site of the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade, a Polish

underground military unit who collaborated with Nazi Germany against communists during the Second World War. These kinds of actions are giving increased confidence to Poland’s neo-Nazis who were the leading forces among a 60,000 strong ultra-nationalist march through Warsaw last November.

The alliance’s junior partners include the Danish People’s Party (DF) described by some commentators as “right-wing populist” by others simply as “Far right”. Islamophobia is the DF’s main racism of choice, one of their spokespersons opining “Muslims should live in a Muslim country – not here”. I doubt, though, if that would put off Jonathan Arkush, the Tory-supporting-Trump-supporting, President of the Jewish Board of Deputies, fronting Monday’s rally in the Square, since the DF are very enthusiastic supporters of Israel under its leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

I wonder how Arkush and his counterpart at the rally, Jonathan Goldstein, of the Jewish Leadership Council, feel about other members of this Tory/Law and Justice-led alliance, such as the Latvian National Alliance made up of “All for Latvia”, which describes “international globalism” and “multiculturalism” as its chief enemies, and its partners, “For Fatherland and Freedom”. This National Alliance takes part in an annual event commemorating the Latvian Waffen-SS, and some years back reprinted a book seeking to justify the crimes committed by the Latvian Waffen-SS against Jews and Russians.





Another member of this right-wing European grouping who, also, it seems, enjoy a good march, are the Bulgarian National Movement (IMRO). In February, for the 16th consecutive year, they held a march through the centre of Sofia to honour Hristo Lukov, an army general who led the pro-Nazi Union of National Legions during the war. The march ended by the house where Lukov was assassinated by communist partisans. Neo-nazis from several other parts of Europe flew in to take part in the march. IMRO also express racist sentiments against Bulgarian Turks and Roma communities.

While it is true that a number of anti-Corbyn Labour MPs were present last Monday, and Luciana Berger spoke for them at the rally in Parliament Square, the collusion between the Tory Party, the Tory supporting press, and the right-wing self-proclaimed leaders of the Jewish community, this week, has been plain to see. No doubt a number of protesters came there in good faith to protest against antisemitism, having been conditioned by constant right-wing press stories, including those by the Jewish Chronicle, to believe that instances of antisemitism only occur in the ranks of Labour (and, of course, there have been real instances), but others would have taken part knowing the damage this could inflict not just on Labour’s leader, but on the Labour Party in general in the forthcoming local elections. One Tory activist, David Thomas, a former Conservative parish councillor was honest enough to tweet “It’s an actual stroke of genius we’ve been able to pull this off, perfect timing heading into the elections too” (My emphasis). He has since deleted the tweet.

It appears that those Jewish “leaders” who are cosying up to the Tories for mutual benefits can only look in one direction as they seek to uncover antisemitism. Have we heard any of them speak out against, let alone even question, the highly dubious alliance the Tories have built and are sustaining with Islamophobes and antisemites in the Tory-led Group in the European Parliament? Why ever not?

Theresa May now plans to take advantage of the febrile atmosphere around the question of antisemitism by earmarking April 17th for a parliamentary debate about it. All racism is serious. It is surely one of the main failures of May’s Government, and Cameron’s before her, that antisemitism has been rising as have other forms of racism and bigotry against African-Caribbeans, Muslims, Roma, refugees, and members of the LGBT community on their watch. This has multiplied further since the Brexit Referendum. Minorities who face much more frequent instances of abuse and attack by racists than Jews do, and encounter institutional racism on a daily basis, might be angry that the Tories sudden desire to spend an afternoon discussing racism is limited to only one kind. They surely have a point. Nevertheless, Labour should absolutely welcome this debate.

Not only will it give parliamentarians the chance to explore the issue in depth and share their understandings, it will also provide Labour with the opportunity to put the Government on the spot about their institutional links to antisemites and other racists in Europe. For all their bluster when confronting Labour, the Tory-supporting leaders of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council seem much too coy to do that to their own side. I hope Jeremy Corbyn and other members of the Labour Party can show them how it is done!