During an election victory party on Wednesday evening, the Jewish Labour Movement noted their part in Labour’s success on July 4.
JLM chair Mike Katz was met with cheers when he told the crowd: “It’s down to all of us, collectively we got our party back.”
Former JLM leader Peter Mason told around 300 activists in central London, “Every time the leader of this party said we have changed the party so we can change the country, he is talking about you. He’s talking about each and every person who was knocking on doors in Barnett and Manchester.”
Katz added, "After 2019, you might have thought we needed to spend 40 years in the political desert to recover from the shame of Labour antisemitism. Few would have believed what was achieved in just four short years, thanks to our hard work with Keir and Angela.
“We now have seven new Jewish MPs and around a fifth of the PLP are JLM members or ally members. We are back as a force in Parliament, speaking up for progressive Jewish voices in the Party and our community."
Just a day after seven MPs had the whip suspended for voting against the King’s speech, Katz said “We are never going back to gesture politics.”
Mason echoed this sentiment, commenting “Yesterday’s antics proved that there are unfortunately still too many people in our party that view the business of government through the prism of scoring factional points to undermine the government that wants to make a difference in this country.”
Approximately 300 activists signed up for the JLM election bash in central London[Missing Credit]
Mason, now the Labour leader of Ealing Council, and standing to be elected onto Labour’s governing executive committee, told activists: “We cannot allow the gains that we have made to make our party fit for purpose and a government fit for the future to be lost.”
He went on, "This is why we absolutely must win in the NEC. Keir and Angie have had our backs, it is now time to have his and to protect the gains that everybody in this room has achieved.”
Mason implored activists to nominate the ‘Labour to Win’ national executive committee slate, “people who have had our back through the last five years and beyond,” Mason said.
Newly elected MP and Solicitor General, Sarah Sackman, spoke of her pride in swearing in on the Hebrew bible and said it had been seen by thousands on X, including her cousins in Israel. Sackman told activists that JLM was her “nuclear political family.”
The MP for Finchley and Golders Green is also Vice Chair of JLM and noted “Victories of the sort we saw on July 4 do not come about by accident... We only earned the right to change the country because we changed the party.”
“For that victory to mean something, it is going to need the Labour government to deliver, deliver for the Jewish community and deliver for all our communities,” Sackman said.
