What Diane Abbott missed in her letter about racism

The MP has been criticised for encouraging a ‘hierarchy of racism’, writes Sean O’Grady

Abbott has lost the Labour whip (PA)

Diane Abbott’s letter to the press about racism – and subsequent apology and withdrawal of her remarks – have proved to be one of the most controversial incidents in an eventful career. She has been widely condemned for her remarks, not least by Keir Starmer who called them antisemitic. She has lost the whip, and may well forfeit the right to stand as an official Labour candidate at the next election. What is less discussed is the nub of the issue of antisemitism and what she got wrong about it.

Why did Abbott write the letter?

She was reacting to an article by Tomiwa Owolade in The Observer, which pointed out that “white” minorities can be victims of racism too: “The Evidence for Equality National Survey report complicates some of the underlying assumptions that many ostensibly progressive people espouse on racial inequality in Britain. In fact, the two groups most likely to say they have experienced racist abuse, according to the survey, are Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities and Jewish people.”

Abbott has been criticised for encouraging a ‘hierarchy of racism’. How so?

The letter, which Abbott has said was an “initial draft” of thoughts sent for publication in error, suggested that because Jewish, Irish and Traveller people looked, or were, white, they did not face racism but rather prejudice. She suggested that the kinds of persecution and racism experienced by these people weren’t really racism in the way in the way it is experienced by Black people. At one point it was compared to prejudice against redheads.

Abbott therefore implies, subconsciously or not, that anti-Black racism is both more vicious, a bigger problem and taken less seriously than other kinds of racism and thus lower in the “hierarchy” of racism than, say, antisemitism. As a corollary, she implies antisemitism, because of the attention given to it, was being taken more seriously than anti-Black racism, and thus higher in some notional hierarchy.

Was Diane Abbott being antisemitic?

Starmer thinks so, and this goes to the heart of the matter.

Racism inevitably produces prejudice, conflict, injustice, inequality, and pain wherever it arises, for each ethnic group has its own distinct forms and its own history. Speaking of the Irish, for example, as Abbott did, reminds one that they suffered 800 years of colonial oppression, religious persecution, famine, mass migration, denial of civil rights and exploitation. Islamophobia, as we know all too well, is sadly widespread online, and seeks to depict and dehumanise Muslim people.

Abbott correctly points out some of the cruelties visited upon people of colour in the United States, and the transatlantic slave trade, are not directly replicated for all other groups.

What Abbott failed to register either in her “initial draft” article or in the subsequent apology, is the special historical and indeed now revived features of antisemitism. It is Jewish people that are accused of being part of some great global conspiracy, a secret plan to achieve world domination. No other religious or ethnic group or diaspora has been subjected to the idea that they are permanently acting against the interest of whole nations or peoples.

There is no equivalent to the blood libel or the hoaxes such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion used as a basis for persecution and genocide.

That doesn’t mean that antisemitism has won some sort of grotesque competition, and ranks higher in some notional hierarchy.

An example of the way the distinct nature of antisemitism was ignored within Labour is the Chakrabarti Report of 2015. Shami Chakrabarti was commissioned by Jeremy Corbyn to look into “into antisemitism and other forms of racism” in the Labour Party. This was defended by Chakrabarti because “my clear view is that there is not, and cannot be, any hierarchy of racism”.

Yet neither she nor Corbyn were being asked to rank antisemitism higher than, say, Islamophobia, but merely to try and push back hard against its troubling modern recrudescence in their party. Her report thus simply ignored antisemitism as a unique, distinct phenomenon, with need for a laser focus and targeted action, in favour of platitudes and statements that all forms of racism are “equally vile”. That is true but beside the point in this instance.

Is the Labour right using antisemitism to discredit the left?

Arguably, the left need no help because they’re perfectly capable of discrediting themselves. The Forde report, commissioned by the party into the leak of yet another, earlier, investigation concluded last year that the issue has become tangled up in Labour’s civil war: “This report thoroughly disproves any suggestion that antisemitism is not a problem in the party or that it is a ‘smear’ or a ‘witch hunt’… It was of course also true that some opponents of Jeremy Corbyn saw the issue as a means of attacking him and … both factions used the issue as a factional weapon.”

So what now?

Abbott has apologised, but the suggestion that it was an “initial draft” has been derided. Abbott has said that “errors” were present in this draft, but “there is no excuse”.

“Racism takes many forms, and it is completely undeniable that Jewish people have suffered its monstrous effects, as have Irish people, Travellers and many others,” Abbott has said.

The Labour Party as an entity has accepted the 2020 Equalities and Human Rights Commission report that said the party had acted unlawfully in its treatment of Jewish members under Corbyn’s leadership. The party has also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

It is true that Abbott has apologised, and Corbyn has not. The former leader is still suspended from the parliamentary party after comments he made that suggested the scale of the antisemitism problem within Labour had been overstated.

That was the hill that Corbyn decided to end his political career on: will Abbott follow suit?