I arrived in London in September 1965 to take up a Lectureship at the London School of Economics. I had been in the US before then to take my Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania and work in the University of California, Berkeley, California. While at Berkeley, I had witnessed the Students movement which wanted free speech and right to demonstrate off campus to fight for civil rights for Black Americans. I had joined demonstrations though on an immigrant visa. I had joined protests against Vietnam War.
So, let us say I did not behave like a young student from India who keeps to his studies and to his fellow Indian friends. I was radicalised and politically on the Left. When I came to LSE with its reputation for radicalism, I felt comfortable and joined in the social life. Early on I organised a teach-in against Enoch Powell’s racist speech and got threatened by the British National Party. Students made me Honorary President of the Students Union and I backed their occupation of LSE in October 1968.
Given this background it was no surprise that I joined the Labour Party in September 1971 in my local branch of Holloway ward of Islington. I was active in the Party canvassing at elections, attending meetings both at the ward and the constituency levels. I became Chair of the Ward and then Chair of the Party in 1986. When I retired in 1992 from being Chair, they made me Lifetime President of the Islington South and Finsbury Constituency Labour Party.
I have always been warmly treated in the Party. I have been active and in 1991 the Party nominated me for a Peerage. I was the first ‘Asian’ Labour Peer. Being a Labour Peer was an honour and a duty. I began under Neil Kinnock and worked very closely with John Smith who died so young. Tony Blair brought us the rare experience of success and three election victories.
In the forty-nine years of my membership, the Party has spent 18 years in office and 31 years in opposition. It is when we are in opposition that we get into trouble and Left Right differences get sharp; especially when extreme left - Trotskyists - who do not share our values of democratic socialism infiltrate the party.
This happened during the Seventies and Eighties when Militant tendency launched their entryist strategy and captured a lot of parties such as Liverpool, Lambeth where they brought the Party in disrepute. Neil Kinnock showed great leadership and the Party got rid of the militants.
But after our defeat in 2010 and 2015, the infiltration recurred. Edward Miliband had introduced the £3 membership but that led to large infiltration by a new movement called Momentum. Some of the same leaders thrown out in the Eighties returned.
Unlike in the earlier Militant period, the Momentum infiltrators brought with them a virulent antisemitic Ideology. The Labour Party has always had a prominent and respectable place for Jewish Members since its founding. The Zionist Movement was a radical Jewish Movement for the working people and friend of the Labour Party. The antisemitic tendency was used by members to hound Jewish members, especially Jewish MPs and even more so women Jewish MPs. Zionism was used like a dirty word and a dangerous tendency.
I felt uneasy about this and somewhat ashamed that a democratic socialist. Movement was being tainted by racism. I did mention my views within the Labour Peers Group. Not only I against any form of racism, but also through my life I have benefited from teaching by Professors who were Jewish as well as many friends both in America and UK. I had a Jewish Professor even in Mumbai when I was studying there.
It was during the week of 16 November and especially on 17/18 November that my mind was made up. The decision by a committee of the NEC to readmitted Jeremy Corbyn just 19 days after his suspension meant that the Party headquarters were ambivalent about eradicating antisemitic behaviour. It was that ambivalence which the Equality and Human Rights Commission had criticised. The decision to deny the Party Whip, albeit for three months at the present for Jeremy Corbyn added insult to injury. It is well known that Jeremy Corbyn ever took his duties towards the whip seriously. So, the ‘punishment’ was meaningless.
When I expressed my views, many friends in the Labour Peers group tried to persuade me to stay and fight antisemitism. They were of the view that the new leadership will deliver on the promise to fight the scourge. But what I saw on the first moves did not reassure me. I could see that the Party would get entangled in procedural details which will delay any action, I had to escape the shame of belonging to a racist party.
In leaving the Labour Party I am not rejecting its values nor demeaning my experience in it. I just want to remember the Party as it was in its good days when I first joined. If I am mistaken and the Party does eliminate antisemitism, no one would be happier than I. But in the meanwhile, I will stay out.
[I have described some of these experiences in greater detail in my autobiography Rebellious Lord published this month by Amazon India under the Westland label.]
