"A true Labour friend," is how the JC described Harold Wilson a fortnight ago, on the centenary of the former prime minister's birth. These are difficult times for the left, and it's worth recalling the close historical links between the British and Israeli Labour parties. Wilson exemplified them. He sacked the actor Andrew Faulds as a front-bench spokesman on the arts in 1973 when Faulds accused pro-Israeli Labour MPs of having dual loyalties.
Wilson was right. To accuse British Jews of dual loyalty, on grounds of sympathy with the Jewish state, is illegitimate and demagogic. The charge can't be disproved because it's impossible to have reliable knowledge of another person's psychology. Yet this sentiment and others from the same stable are continually cropping up in Labour circles. I don't claim they're representative. On the contrary, Labour friends of Israel and supporters of a two-state solution are numerous. The party is one of the great forces of centre-left politics in Europe. It's integral to Britain's modern social as well as political history. Its most recent two prime ministers are well known for their interest in Jewish affairs and opposition to xenophobia.
The difference between Labour a generation ago and now is not that the party has grown hostile to British Jewry and to Israel. It is that the very worst elements in British politics no longer regard Labour as hostile to them. Last week, I watched with incredulity as Andrew Neil quizzed a Trotskyist called Gerry Downing on the BBC's Daily Politics. Downing had just had his membership application first accepted and then - on grounds of inflammatory comments about 9/11 - rejected by Labour. And here he was talking about "the Jewish question": the term is a code for revolutionaries who believe, in a sort of secular millenarian version of Christian tradition, that Jews are historically aberrant. He threw in the charge of "dual citizenship" (he meant loyalty).
Thankfully, Downing has had his membership revoked. As I write, Labour has suspended an activist called Vicki Kirby, vice-chair of the party's Woking branch, for posting on Twitter that Jews "have big noses" and describing Hitler as "the Zionist god".
These activists are neither informed nor intelligent, nor articulate. But, as a Labour sympathiser, I'm faced with the question I've long put to Ukip supporters: why do people with unambiguous racist opinions see your party as the vehicle to represent them?
The worst elements in politics don't see Labour as hostile
In Ukip's case, it's because the party has an ineradicable tinge of racism. With Labour, it's different: it's because the party's traditions and defenders are under assault by a revolutionary fringe. But that fringe is finding little resistance from the leadership.
Labour is now mounting an inquiry into accusations of antisemitism in the Oxford University Labour Club. I chaired the club way back in 1984, and recall that it invited one Tony Greenstein to speak on behalf of a group called the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine. Greenstein caused bewilderment and outrage in defending terrorist violence against Israel. When a resolution was put to affiliate the club to his organisation, only two votes were cast in favour with dozens opposed. Greenstein recalls this and has more recently lambasted me and my university comrades as "the biggest collection of dimwits I recall". For good measure, he defended the IRA's attempted murder of Margaret Thatcher as a "military target".
Greenstein is in the Labour party today, as a campaigner for Jeremy Corbyn. I'm not. I wish the party's moderate MPs success but the fight has gone out of me.
