From the outside looking in…The PSC AGM

by Paul Eisen

The EC

Yes, PSC has hitched itself firmly to the Jewish supremacists – the ‘anti-Zionist’ variety this time but it won’t be long before dear old PSC is an open and full-blown hasbara mouthpiece.

I was never a very good PSC member. Never much of an activist, all that leafleting and politburo-style meetings, never did much for me. And since DYR and I were the very first casualties in the ongoing and current PSC witch-hunt, to stand outside the PSC AGM was something I viewed with eager anticipation but also trepidation.

My reasons for attending were four-fold:

To support Francis Clark-Lowes in his appeal against expulsion and Gill Kaffash in her motion to bring some sanity to this increasingly nonsensical ‘racist/anti-racist’ debate.

1. To hand out leaflets and badges about Deir Yassin and its remembrance
2. To witness for myself the progress of PSC’s descent into complete subservience to Jewish power.
3. To show my face after a five year absence.

I needn’t have worried. PSC members are every bit as lovely as I recall and those members of the Executive Council I saw and who saw me were also polite, if a little downcast. Sarah Colbourne pretended she didn’t see me but Betty Hunter did manage a strangled gurgle when asked cheerily why she wasn’t wearing her “Remember Deir Yassin‘ badge. And the that little Jews-only trio – Abe and Ros Hayeem and Deborah Maccoby – though visibly paling at the sight of me, had the good grace to shuffle hastily past. Even friend and brother Tony Greenstein managed to refrain from his usual foul and abusive behaviour as, shifty and alone he entered the building. But the PSC rank-and-file were as the PSC rank-and-file always are – open, friendly and one hundred-and ten per-cent committed to the Palestinian people. .

I began to leaflet. For years, I was a market trader – not the money markets or commodity markets – but the real, get-your-gums-round-my-plums, markets – so I know a thing or two about shifting gear- and believe me, the principles of shifting gear on a market are much the same as pushing fliers at a PSC AGM – Pile ‘em high and make ’em cheap (in this case, free), never crowd the punter and, above all, keep going. Everyone loves a free badge so I gave out a lot. And there’s no doubt that Deir Yassin carries a lot of resonance for a lot of people– all the more so for the five year absence.

I didn’t see Francis make his speech but I read it beforehand. Honest, thoughtful and beautifully crafted, I can only assume it was as inspiring to hear as it was to read and I know it was received with modest but determined and warm applause. He lost of course but what did we expect?

And Gill’s motion? Well, Gill’s motion wasn’t called. It seems the AGM just ran out of time. And before all you conspiracy theorists get busy, Gill’s motion was not the only one not called. Course it wasn’t. If I was engaged in shady practices to ensure unpalatable ideas didn’t reach my membership, I too would make sure that Gill’s motion wasn’t the only one not called.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi at the AGM

And finally, what of those critical ‘anti-racism’ motions? The ones that deal with all those pesky anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Well, the EC decided to ensure the future of its Star Chamber by hitching its motion with its childlike ‘building’ this and ‘the masses’ that firmly to Jews-only motion number 9. This one proposed by Tony Greenstein and Naomi Idrissi-Wimbourne was my favourite.

Tony Greenstein in a moment of reflection

Firmly Marxist in its rhetoric, this motion above all, set out to protect and to excuse Jews from their crimes in Palestine.

Like the EC motion it called for the witch-hunt against ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘Holocaust denial’ to be intensified. But it also called for ‘a series of forums’ to ‘build understanding’ of ‘Israel as a settler-colonial, apartheid state (So where is the Mother Country – World Jewry perhaps?) and ‘Educational materials’ to ‘develop understanding’ of ‘Israel’s status as a client state of US imperialism’ (So, it’s all the Goyishe Americans’ fault) and ‘the non-Jewish origins and Jewish opposition to Zionism’ (You see, it’s nothing to do with us). Yaakov Sverdlov and Pol Pot would both have loved it.

They passed of course just like we knew they would.

Yes, PSC has hitched itself firmly to the Jewish supremacists – the ‘anti-Zionist’ variety this time but it won’t be long before dear old PSC is an open and full-blown hasbara mouthpiece.

But one thing I know. People aren’t so stupid and PSC activists certainly aren’t. So one question remains: Now the PSC has joined in oppressing precisely those people it was supposed to liberate, where will all those ‘open, friendly, one hundred-and-ten-per-cent committed and thoroughly decent’ PSC activists go?

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