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    Alex Nunns on IHRA definition 📂 Archived Message

    Posted by Sleepy George on September 9, 2025, 12:56 pm


    Having little independence of mind I need someone to tell me what to think, When Alex Nunns goes silent, I am bereft. He was always my No 1 guru, my hero, my god. I hide this opinion from him because, unlike George Galloway, he despises flatterers and does not encourage them.

    In New Left Review Sidecar he talks to O. Eagleton about them days.Twitter has stopped allowing me to post links but someone els may be able to do so.
    Below, possibly, is an excerpt

    https://x.com/alexnunns

    ‘
    .......it’s understandable that some people would call for Your Party to be defiant and robust from the outset, in supposed contrast to the Corbyn leadership which is accused of having given too much ground. This was reflected by Zarah Sultana in her Sidecar interview, when she said Corbynism ‘capitulated’ to the IHRA definition of antisemitism. But Jeremy didn’t capitulate: on the contrary, he and his team held out to the bitter end in an attempt to resist the adoption by Labour’s National Executive Committee of the most problematic examples that accompany the IHRA definition – some of which have been used to clamp down on pro-Palestinian speech and Palestinians’ right to describe their own dispossession. Jeremy endured hell throughout the summer of 2018 for making this stand; no other part of the Labour movement represented on the NEC stuck by him. Right down to the wire, at the NEC meeting in September 2018 when the examples were adopted in full, Jeremy tabled a statement arguing that it ‘should not be regarded as antisemitic to describe Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict’ (i.e. one state). There wasn’t enough support to put it to a vote. There was no magic lever Jeremy or his team could pull to change that situation. The Labour Party is a byzantine organisation with multiple power centres; being the leader doesn’t mean you can always get your way.
    A more valid criticism of Corbynism would be that the organised parts of the project – including the leadership and the left-wing campaign group Momentum – didn’t sufficiently shield grassroots members from the ‘antisemitism’ firestorm. The mechanisms for two-way engagement with the broader movement were lacking. Some members who were wrongly accused of antisemitism suffered hugely traumatic experiences that changed their lives. It’s easy to forget how suffocating the atmosphere was. It demoralised the movement.”

    Gb

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