Diane Abbott to be banned from standing for Labour

Dianne Abbott is not in a position to say whether I, as an Irish person, has experienced racism. That is for me to decide.

Also, black people aren't the only people who were taken as slaves. Irish people certainly were.

Starmer is purging the party of left wing MPs. Unfortunately Labour are the only party to vote for to get rid of the Tories. Unless you have a candidate from another party who will take the seat from the Tories (in my area the Lib Dems are more popular than Labour.) I see Labour now as Tory lite. Ideally they won't get a majority and will have to form a coalition with other parties. Not with the Tories obviously! I never thought I would have this view of the Labour party, I was a staunch supporter for years.

Everyone will have an opinion on the letter from it being understandable based on her own experiences through to being poorly worded and all the way to it being outright offensive.

But if I had had an investigation into me at work starting in April 2023, lasting all the way to December, being asked to take action that was completed by February and then hearing nothing - that would not be acceptable. For my 'manager' to then outright lie about whether it was complete and then to get a partial but not full outcome would not be right. That strain she is under when the clock is ticking about whether you can stand again, the media pressure, the online abuse etc is going to have an impact. Whether there are health issues at play or not that is a woman who has been placed in an awful position and the emotion will come through, which is not a weakness.

And she isn't the only one. Seeing how little they cared about another candidate being barred from standing - who found out through social media - it becomes a pattern. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c3ggv2jxz7go

Maybe people feel they have done the wrong thing and shouldn't be allowed to stand or maybe people feel that there is an over-reaction or even a plot to block candidates from one wing. But the lack of care and responsibility for people dedicating a lot of their lives to fighting for a party and via that for what they believe for the country cannot be right.

I lived in a constituency where an MP was quite seriously ill - it definitely affected her work. She started out as very active and over time we saw less and less of her.

I really, really want to know who leaked the original story. It changes the whole thing if we knew what side it came from.

One of the offensive details of Diane Abbott's letter is the degree to which it is ignorant of and minimizes real, historical persecution. So, for instance, she is technically correct in that Jewish people weren't required to sit at the back of the bus in America prior to the civil rights era, but doesn't mention the degree of persecution which they might face in the United States of America. Jews were, for instance (along with African Americans, freemasons, and Catholics), one of the four enemies of white America in the eyes of the Ku Klux Klan. This is, of course, why many American Jews supported the civil rights movements, as they had sympathy with the persecution of Black Americans, and also why a number of American Jews ended the victims of racist violence from white supremacists (such as with the murders of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi in 1964). The blithe dismissal of the possibility of Jews facing racism is, of course, offensive given the degree of discrimination and, on occasion, violence which American Jews faced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

And, of course, one can make similar points about Travelers, the Irish, slavery, and so on. Attempting to dismiss the racism that certain groups have suffered is always going to be insulting, as it requires ignoring a large amount of inconvenient evidence and, in many cases, brutal persecution.

I saw her on TV last night and realised just how frail she was. For her health alone I don't think she needs to stand. Listening to people in her constituency she is popular .

Ash Sarkar (hardly anyone's idea of a right winger) said that when she was working in a pub the only group towards which the landlord was openly racist were the Travellers.

Even people like Owen Jones condemned the letter at the time. The "she didn't say anything wrong" crowd are off their heads.

A bit of a side issue but the refusal to engage with any actual argument they find difficult is a real problem with the modern Left (by which I mean people who would be considered Left wing within the Labour Party). It might seem easier when bashing away on Twitter but it kills you whenever you have to operate outside that environment. It's not just that it makes you look like an idiot - it also makes you hit out at the people who you know deep down are making a resonable argument, even if you disagree with it.

The letter is crass.
Within the UK, no other group has had a bloody Sunday other that Northern Irish Catholics, nor gerrymandering.
No group faces less acceptance of their culture than travellers.
Anti-black racism is a major thing and not diminished by other prejudices and discrimination.

That the debate has not bothered with discrimination against travellers shows they are the most marginalised group IMO.

Ah, sorry, I thought it was a reference to posters on the thread. My mistake.

From The Observer, 23 April 2023

Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism.

In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.
Diane Abbott
^House of Commons, London SW1^

She does seem to rely on her own definitions of things. It does seem to reflect a common flaw, that things that affect her personally hit her harder and are therefore more serious.

Yes she was emotional, yes her hand were shaking. Do any of you think you could have just stood there and been 100% cool calm and collected?

She had to be supported by two people to stay upright. And a woman who's been fighting at the sharp end of politics for the last four decades doesn't get all trembly at the actions of a bully boy Labour staffer.

From what I understand the leadership wanted her to stand down with a peerage and thought she had agreed - either someone in the LOTO team wanted to scupper that through malice (they should be identified and fired if so) or it was scuppered by Diane's team to make trouble for Starmer.

And can we please remember this very nasty jibe flung at Keir Starmer for no particular reason? No point of principle involved here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/118w3gt/diane_abbott_on_twitter_keir_starmer_now_saying/

I think you can when it concerns a chronic medical.condition. Diabetes does not go away in 7 years, especially poorly controlled diabetes. It just gets worse and worse, and poorly controlled diabetes does affect cognitive function.

She wrote the letter, presumably read it back to herself and didn't think "maybe I should acknowledge somewhere that Jews and Travellers were murdered in their millions for their race when I talk about the forms of racism they "didn't" suffer".

The people claiming "she didn't say anything wrong" are either in bad faith or genuinely don't understand inference.

And let's not talk about her claims that Russia is not the aggressor in Ukraine, or setting up a pro-Serbian support group in the 90s alongside Alfred Sherman - an advisor to Serbian war criminals, a man who considered Margaret Thatcher a bit too left wing and who had this to say in 1974;

As for the lumpen proletariat, coloured people and the Irish, let's face it, the only way to hold them in check is to have enough well-armed and properly trained police."

Diane Abbot said racism against travellers doesn't exist in the same way as against Black people, I believe. She said they suffer discrimination. Thats why she was suspended.

@whatab , Have people been suggesting that travellers do not experience discrimination? I had missed that.

Who has said, or where has it been implied that black women aren’t entitled to express emotion? Diane Abbott is as hard as they come. She is strong, and has stood upto a lot over the decades with not an ounce of nerves or emotion. I don’t think for a minute her trembling was due to emotion. I don’t think she has any feelings of loyalty to the current Labour party, but of course wants to represent the constituency she has had control of over the years. I really don’t think she’s very well, and is a shadow of her former self. Still has the passion she has always had, but her light doesn’t burn as bright as it used to.

Something that many people seem unaware of is that someone can be both black and Jewish.

I got talking to a "visibly Jewish" man years ago. He was also black. I had other Jewish friends but they were all secular. He was religious. He told me once he'd experienced more antisemitic racism than anti-black racism. Oviously neither is acceptable in any way and that's just one person's experience.

It is, however, rather shocking imo to see attempts by some to downplay or dismiss racism towards Jewish people and Travellers (from what I understand Travellers experience huge amounts of prejudice directly against them).

IMO it's just another way to patronise and undermine Diane Abbott. See also calling women hysterical etc etc

... and also to prove that it wasn't unsubstantiated gossip on Mumsnet.

FFS

And I wasn't. I was giving @TempestTost the story that was in the press as she wasn't sure where she'd heard it.

I hope that's OK with you?

That article is from seven years ago. Her diabetes may or may not be relevant but you can’t use information from seven years ago as definitive evidence of the state of play today.

TempestTost· Today 10:45

wellington77 · Yesterday 23:18
A lot of people on here has said that Diane Abbott is Ill or seems Ill. What have people heard is actually wrong? I haven’t heard this before.

My understanding is that she has poorly controlled diabetes. Which can affect cognitive function. But I could not tell you where I heard it.

Probably unsubstantiated gossip on Mumsnet.

I'm so fed up, as a voter, of seeing abuse of process rather than straight forward addressing of issues. It is underhand, it is cowardly and it gives me little faith in the party's adherence to democracy.

I have limited sympathy for Diane Abbott, I think her use of critical race theory is divisive and her letter at best unwise in a Labour party still tackling antisemitism. That said, Labour either should have dealt with it swiftly and removed her from the party so she could choose to stand as an independent, or they should have dropped it.

This manipulation and politicking instead is appalling on a personal level, and contemptuous of the voters.

It was widely reported in the press at the time.

From The