Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.In recent weeks, the British Labour Party has been accused of suffering from a crisis of anti-Semitism. But the claim only makes sense if anti-Semitism is redefined to include anti-Zionism. To do so obscures the party’s actual history of anti-Semitism, which is rooted in its support for empire and nationalism, not in anti-Zionism.
The current discussion of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is conducted as if nobody had ever before noticed it has a racism problem. But anti-racists have for decades been pointing to the history of Labour support for racism, including anti-Semitism, and colonialism.
Unlike the Conservatives and Liberals, Labour has also had a substantial internationalist and anti-imperialist tendency. But this tendency has historically been marginalised by the Labour leadership, which favoured versions of ‘social imperialism’ – the doctrine that class conflict is best resolved through social reforms framed as necessary for the defence of nation and empire. Social imperialism inevitably implied racism too.
