To the Trades Union Congress conference, where Mick Lynch is once again at the centre of political controversy. The RMT union boss took to the stage at a pro-Palestine fringe event to first berate the decisions of Foreign Secretary David Lammy before appearing to compare Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the, um, slave trade. Good heavens…
Last week, Lammy suspended 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel – prompting ex-PM Boris Johnson to question whether the Foreign Secretary was ‘abandoning Israel’ while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the move as ‘shameful’. The decision was branded an ‘attempt to satisfy certain wings of the Labour movement’ by shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell, but it seems Lammy’s approach hasn’t exactly worked. Now strike-happy Lynch has piled in, scorning the call:
Some licences, what was it? 30 out of 150 or something of that number? This is like somebody standing up in front of you in the 1840s and saying: ‘I’m going to abolish some slavery. I’m going to liberate some people. I’m going to do this measure, but it’s only going to apply in this very small way.’
Talk about a stretch, eh? And he didn’t stop there, going on to rage:
We’ve got to make sure that if we’re going to run a campaign, Labour is feeling the heat… We’ve got to make them comfortable that support for the Palestinian people is a mainstream idea, just as people all over this movement were happy to identify with the anti-Apartheid campaign in the 70s and 80s.
Crikey…
Lynch has faced a swift backlash, with former Labour MP – and now-independent anti-Semitism adviser for the government – Lord Mann remarking it was ‘not a very clever analogy’ before suggesting the union boss ‘rows back’ on his statement. The shadow foreign secretary fumed: ‘The comparison Lynch draws with slavery is also deeply offensive to an ally of the UK.’ Meanwhile Tory MP Greg Smith labelled the hosting of ‘anti-Israel fringe meetings’ as ‘utterly bizarre’, adding: ‘The comments made trying to compare a democracy trying to defend themselves with slavery are off-the-charts bonkers.’ Quite.
So will Labour now distance itself from Lynch’s rather controversial comments? Stay tuned…
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