Allegations of racism rock the British Labour Party once again, brought to the fore by none other than Britain’s first female black MP and a lifelong anti racism campaigner, Diane Abbott.
In April, she wrote a letter to the Observer newspaper suggesting that Jewish, Irish, and, traveler people, were not subjected to racism all their lives, and that although white people with points of difference suffer prejudice, they have not suffered the same racism as black people.
Her comments were deemed racist and anti-semitic. The backlash was immediate. She apologized, but was suspended pending an investigation.
Yet in an open letter published on X this week, she has accused Labour leader, Keir Starmer, of trying to oust her from Parliament by ensuring she cannot stand for the Labor party.
As a black woman and someone on the left of the Labour Party, I have, unfortunately, been forced to reach the conclusion that I will NOT get a fair hearing from this Labour leadership.
Dianne Abbot, Labour MP
Last year an Al Jazeera documentary exposed apparent anti black discrimination and a hierarchy of racism in the Labour Party under Keir Starmer.
For example, earlier this year right wing Labour MP, Neil Coyle, who had racially abused a journalist and had a sexual harassment complaint upheld against him, was reinstated after a paltry five day suspension.
Abbot was shadow interior minister under former Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who was blocked as a Labour MP over an anti semitism row in 2020.
We asked former Labour Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who knows Diane Abbott personally, for his view on the matter.
She has been a committed person challenging all forms of racism and prejudice. And this was nothing to do with racism, I mean, who isn’t occasionally going to make a mistake in something they say or write?
But as I say, this was about getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn, and she was one of Jeremy’s longest [sic] friends and solid supporters.
Ken Livingstone Former Mayor of London
Some of her other colleagues are saying that Abbott is being thrown out of Westminster because she does not conform to the domestic neoliberal policy and rejects the ongoing UK imperialist ambitions, that she should not have sought to placate the Labour leadership.
Instead, they say, she should have stood up for what she believed in from the start, because there was never going to be a way back for her.
