Labour MP Simon Danczuk, the MP who recently clashed with Owen Jones on the Daily Politics over the Spending Review, has a piece in today's Telegraph in which he writes that the politics of the Labour left "should be viewed in the same way as we view the views of the BNP".
Labour MP Simon Danczuk, the MP who recently clashed with Owen Jones on the Daily Politics over the Spending Review, has a piece in today’s Telegraph in which he writes that the politics of the Labour left “should be viewed in the same way as we view the views of the BNP”.
This is a shame, and it appears frustration has got the better of Danczuk, because putting aside this absurd comparison he makes some good points in the piece.
But no, the Labour left should not “be viewed in the same way as the BNP”. The BNP are a racist party who, amongst other things, would like to forcibly repatriate non-white Britons. If Danczuk had been comparing communists to the BNP then there might have been an academic argument to be had (Stalinists killed more people than fascists, after all), but he only refers to the “Labour left”.
In other words, Danczuk is comparing people who use their time and energy to try to improve the lives of working people – usually for nothing in return – to racist thugs and holocaust deniers who firebomb “P*ki shops”.
As well as being extraordinarily lazy, this is a disgraceful slur on many fine activists.
Sure, some of the Labour left’s ideas about nationalisation may be a little naive; but this does not make them comparable to a party that promotes sinister racial theories and hates people based on nothing more than the pigmentation of their skin.
Danczuk is right to highlight the economic illiteracy of those unreconstructed Bennites who have failed to learn from the failures of the post-war settlement. He is also right to criticise those in the Labour Party who view “Blairites” as the main enemy, rather than the Conservative Party. But comparing the Labour left to the BNP is not the way to make that point.
Being wrong is not the same as being racist, and it’s remarkable that anyone (least of all an MP) should need to be told that.
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27 Responses to “Message to Simon Danczuk MP: Being wrong is not the same as being racist”
Ed
The only problem with that argument is that it’s a big steaming pile of s**t. How, pray tell, has this ‘hatred’ of ‘those from an indigenous background, especially if they’re English’ manifested itself? Would it be the endless pandering to anti-immigrant racism which punctuated the Blair/Brown years, and which has continued under Miliband—the incessant speeches about how we need the ‘courage’ to talk about the ‘problem’ of immigration, as if it required any bravery to take a cheap shot at the most vulnerable people in Britain. Nonsensical claims that people who oppose racism are ‘anti-white’ or ‘anti-English’ are the stock in trade of the BNP and the EDL, so we can take your feigned hostility to the racists with a pinch of salt.
Stephen Henderson
I am a Labour member and consider myself a centrist. I am totally opposed to making people who lose their jobs wait another 3 days (on top of the ~ 3 weeks before they then get support). I can think of no rationale for this other than vindictiveness and appealing to those who hate poor people.
I listened to Simon Danczuk “debate” Owen Jones on telly and he could think of no good reason either. He just insulted those who object as hard-left or unrealistic. But in reality the sums involved in the bedroom tax, the welfare cap, or the increased waiting time are relatively very small – but create maximum misery to those least able to cope.
Simon Danczuk is either not very bright and doesn’t know this – or he has simply surrendered in the face of Daily Mail propaganda.
Since he is writing in the Telegraph today I will be charitable and guess he is not very bright. After all why would a Labour MP be given a platform in The Telegraph if it was for any benefit to the Labour party.
The Labour party should have room for a broad base of left, social democrats and centrists. It shouldn’t have utter morons like Simon Danczuk as MPs. Can someone tell me how on earth he got selected?
Ed
“He is also right to criticise those in the Labour Party who view
“Blairites” as the main enemy, rather than the Conservative Party. But
comparing the Labour left to the BNP is not the way to make that point.”
So this guy compares democratic socialists in the Labour Party—those who want to introduce a more progressive tax system, reverse the creeping privatisation of the NHS, take the railways back into public ownership (instead of forking out huge subsidies to Richard Branson for running them) and reverse the balance between welfare and warfare—to a racist, fascist party whose platform is based solely on stirring up hatred of ethnic minorities, and whose members have been involved in violence against those minorities. And you wonder why democratic socialists see Blairites—no need for scare quotes—as the enemy?
The Labour left doesn’t see the Blairites as ‘the main enemy, rather than the Conservative Party’—that is entirely the wrong way of putting the question. It correctly sees the Blairites and the Tories as two sides of the same coin, partners in crime who are equally determined to make the poor and the working class pay for a crisis caused by their big business cronies. There is nothing to choose between them, they work hand in hand to crush any challenge to the right-wing economic agenda (as in this case, where a ‘Labour’ MP accepts a platform in a Tory newspaper to attack and undermine his own party). It would be far more accurate to say that the Blairites see the Labour left as the main enemy, not the Tories—if you asked them what was more important, beating the unions or beating the Tories, there would be only one honest answer.
Shane
Labour needed to reassess its position in light of the 2010 General Election defeat, only now are the results of that period of reflection being made public. Unfortunatley MPs like Simon Danczuk have failed to learn any lessons. New Labour was rejected out of hand by the British public, the working class felt betrayed by Labour and still does. Why can’t these politicians realise that if Labour is to progress and be the One Nation party that it aspires to be then it has to embrace its working class roots.
Toeing the Osborne line on welfare might get a favourable response from Andrew Neil and the Daily Mail but it alienates the party’s core support. Peter Mandelson reasoned that the left-leaning working class vote could be taken for granted because they had nowhere else to go. Well he was wrong. They don’t engage in politics at all, they sit at home on polling day. An entire generation of potential Labour supporters have fallen by the wayside.
Modern politics has become the mouthpiece for an unrepresentative, privileged section of society. Normal people feel disconnected from the entire process. We need a Labour leader who voices the concerns of those at the bottom of society. It is the only way the Labour party can regain power. If we compete with the Tories for affluent middle-class voters then we will lose for Tories feel no shame in giving to the rich at the expense of the poor.
There is a huge split in the party and I fear the worst if it isn’t resolved soon. Simon Danczuk does not share the same views and values as me. He thinks he is being clever writing articles in the right-wing press criticising the left-wing of the Labour party. He is merely bringing about his own downfall. If 2010 taught us anything at all it was this: the politics that Danczuk espouses is dead.
OldLb
But the left is racist.
The standard claim is that migrants are better workers than British.
That’s racist.
If I said I was only employing British people because migrants were lazy, you would be outraged.
Yet plenty on the left make statements like that with British and Migrant swapped, to justify migration.