Paying lip-service to anti-racism for the advancement of a political career ![]()
One of the less known figures in Lansman’s coup d'état is Professor Cecile Wright, one of two Black members elected to Momentum’s Steering Committee. At least she was a member before Jon Lansman unilaterally dissolved it and all other elected Momentum bodies.
What you might ask caused Ms Wright to receive a vote of no-confidence on 21 January by 7 votes to 4 with 1 abstention from fellow members of the Momentum Black Caucus (MBC)? Well the resolution was quite clear in this respect:
"Momentum Black Caucus has no confidence in Co-Chair Cecile Wright because of her failure to consult the Steering Committee or its Officers before being appointed a director of Momentum (Services) Ltd on 10 January 2017 over a possible conflict of interest.
We note Cecile Wright also failed to inform the SC or its Officers of changes brought in by Momentum's Steering Committee, on which she represents MBC, in Momentum's new constitution, which has eliminated MBC's representative role within the organisation and by 1 July will have removed key MBC Officers from their posts."
We note Cecile Wright also failed to inform the SC or its Officers of changes brought in by Momentum's Steering Committee, on which she represents MBC, in Momentum's new constitution, which has eliminated MBC's representative role within the organisation and by 1 July will have removed key MBC Officers from their posts."
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| Cecile Wright was happy to step into the shoes of someone who had been subject to a political lynching |
Ms Wright said in a statement for the meeting of MBC regarding her support for Lansman’s coup that:
The reading of the document assured me of the embodiment of black representation at all levels of the structure, in addition to the provision for MBC (see 12.2.) within the structures. Thus the new structure offers the scope to build and develop sustained activism within our communities.
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| Cecile Wright has given no support to her Co-Chair of Momentum Black Committee - Marc Wadsworth - who was fitted up on an 'anti-Semitism' charge by US asset Ruth Smeeth MP |
Or as Neil Young once wrote, ‘words, word, between the lines of age.’ It is no coincidence that Cecile Wright is a Professor of Sociology, an academic discipline notorious for its flowery verbiage and imprecision of meaning. In sociology students compete as to who can waste the maximum number of words saying nothing at all. Prof. Wright is clearly an accomplished practitioner of this art.
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| One of many racist tweets that Jackie Walker received - this did not stop Cecile Wright from taking up Jackie Walker's position as Vice Chair of Momentum from Jon Lansman |
If we turn to s.12.2 of the new Constitution we find that it says nothing at all about ‘the embodiment’ (whatever that means) of black representation in the new structures. Nor does it mention MBC. Lansman’s Constitution reads:
12.2 The NCG shall encourage and support the development of liberation networks for women, BAME, disabled and LGBT+ people, and of Youth and Student networks in which members who self-identify as being within these categories are able to self-organise.
On October 2nd Jackie Walker, the Black-Jewish anti-racist activist was removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum, by Jon Lansman with the support of Christine Shawcroft, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Sam Tarry among others. In her statement Wright quite correctly said of the removal of Jackie Walker that: ‘the removal of Jacqueline, essentially represented the contemporary public ‘lynching’ of a black woman and that the Steering Committee was in effect throwing a black woman to ‘the lions’ because she has a voice and dares to use it.’
Strong stuff. But did she mean any of it?
On 17th September, two weeks before the Momentum Committee that ‘publicly lynched’ Jackie, I posted a blog ‘The Jewish Labour Movement and its Political Lynching of Jackie Walker’. I did this because of the level of attacks on Jackie before the contested events at Labour Party conference. There is no dispute that Jackie was the subject of a political lynching at the instigation of the apartheid supporting racists of the JLM and LFI. People who, as the recent Al Jazeera programmes proved, have been destabilising and infiltrating the Labour Party, manufacturing false anti-Semitism allegations, on behalf of the Israeli state. In order to do this they proclaim that their ‘Jewish identity’ is bound up with the Israeli state, thus demonstrating that Zionism is the other side of the coin of anti-Semitism. Because to associate British Jews with the actions of Israel is in itself anti-Semitic.
You would therefore imagine that Cecile would want to have nothing to do with Jon Lansman after he had moved the ‘public lynching’ of her fellow BAME member of Momentum’s Steering Committee, wouldn’t you? After all there can’t have been many Black people in the United States who joined hands with the KKK after a lynching.
However you would be wrong. After voting against Jackie Walker’s lynching, Cecile accepted nomination as Vice-Chair instead of Jackie Walker. Far from supporting Jackie and mobilising people against this naked act of treachery and racism, the good professor accepted what in effect was a political bribe to keep silent.
Ms Wright continued along the same path of naked opportunism by supporting Lansman’s imposed Constitution which destroys any vestige of democracy in Momentum. Self-organised and liberation strands will not have separate representation within Momentum’s National Coordinating Group (NCG) unlike Police Commissioners, MPs and other public officials. This is in marked contrast to the current position within the National Committee.
Jon Lansman, who has admitted to “working closely” with Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement, Newmark is someone who is effectively a representative of the Israeli Embassy inside the Labour Party. Nonetheless Lansman has taken a shine to the good Professor. Cecile Wright has been made a co-director of Momentum (Campaign) Services Ltd alongside Christine Shawcroft. Her reasons for not informing fellow members of MBC were that ‘I was required to observe the strictest confidence for legal reasons.’ This of course is utter twaddle. There is no possible legal reason for not informing people. The Register of Company Directors is a public document freely available on the Internet. Cecile Wright’s reasons for not informing MBC could only have been political - i.e. she didn’t want them to know the extent of her collaboration with the right-wing of Momentum and Lansman in particular.
By joining Lansman’s coup, Prof. Cecile Wright has ensured that what she calls the ‘Black Agenda’ in other words the agenda of a group of Black careerists such as herself will be advanced on the backs of other Black members of the Labour Party. There is no other interpretation.
Cecile Wright has quite a chequered history. She was at one time on the University College Union’s Executive but is no longer on the Executive having fallen out with most of those she worked with in the union. She set up the Labour Black Network with ex-Hackney Labour councillor Patrick Vernon, a fellow wannabe MP who is the party's race advisor. But they too fell out and their network for black careerists became moribund.
Wright then leapt onto the Momentum Black ConneXions bandwagon founded by former Lambeth Labour councillor Kingsley Abrams, who was banned from Labour Party membership and Marlene Ellis. Clearly not a team player, Wright first fell out with Ellis, before dramatically suffering a vote of no confidence at the hands of her MBC comrades. Wright has been an extremely divisive figure in MBC, treating it, Lansman-style, as her personal fiefdom.
Wright only escaped moves to get her to resign as MBC co-chair because the organisation has been rendered defunct within Momentum by Lansman's Constitution. So, like Wright's short-lived Black Labour Network, MBC has become pretty much moribund. You can go to Cecile Wright’s own blog for further details.
Tony Greenstein
