After Roger Waters: The Labour Right has a long history of intolerance
Labour leader Keir Starmer has demanded that Roger Waters concert tour of the anti-fascist epic The Wall be cancelled because he finds certain content ‘Anti-Semitic’. Starmer does not appear to have seen the show and Waters has been very clear that his impression is wrong.
It is one thing for Starmer to disagree with Roger Waters or find aspects of his show offensive but another to actively demand its cancellation. Perhaps needless to say this particular variant of Cancel Culture has not attracted the concern of the self-styled Free Speech Union or a Times Editorial.
It is a reminder however that the Labour right have a long history of taking action against those whose views they find challenging.
Disciplinary action against those advocating policies to the left of what is usually a right-wing Labour leadership has been a consistent feature of the Party since the 1930s.
Nye Bevan and several other MPs were expelled in March 1939 for advocating a popular front against Hitler and working with the Communist Party and others. His ‘crime’ was to appear with some on the left who were proscribed from Labour. A modern day echo is the purge of North Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll because he appeared with Ken Loach to discuss a film.
Bevan was re-admitted in December 1939 after agreeing to break his connections. However he remained a left-wing critic of the Government (when not a Minister himself) and came close to expulsion again on several occasions in the 1950s.
His biographer and successor to his Parliamentary seat in Ebbw Vale Michael Foot had the Labour Whip withdrawn by right-wing leader Hugh Gaitskell for voting against military spending estimates in 1961. It was not restored until Harold Wilson became leader in 1963.
In recent times Jeremy Corbyn has been banned from being a Labour candidate at the next Election, while Diane Abbott remains suspended for writing a letter to the Observer.
As Aditya Chakrabortty says in a Guardian article (8th June) the Labour right has few ideas but is certainly very keen to try and take action against those that do have them.
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