- Lights to green… - 7th October 2026
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- Another kill zone - 6th October 2026
During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 43 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, it has always been central to see the parallels in supposedly ‘new’ political stories – and this is shown in spades today with pushback following the extraordinary vote by Green Party members adopting a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
A storm of criticism has followed the absurd motion by Green Party members proclaiming that Zionism is a form of racism.
The motion, which divided senior party figures, also backed a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine”, which includes modern-day Israel.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski (who is Jewish) was condemned for his lack of leadership skills. The Guardian reported: “…Zack Polanski seemed as if he might be taking the party into a new era. Now, some members fear he has led them off an electoral cliff…”.
Sunday’s ‘Zionism is racism’ motion was actively supported by precisely 1,022 members, or about 0.4 per cent of the total..
But elsewhere there was anger and consternation. Four of the party’s five MPs opposed the motion. Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns said they were “deeply saddened”, while Siân Berry and Carla Denyer said they would support any Jewish members who believed they were being targeted as a result.
Labour Chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said the vote “crosses a line” and called on Mr Polanski to “make clear that this will not be their position moving forwards”.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp criticised the motion on behalf of the Conservatives, saying it demonstrated the Green Party was “toxic to its core”, and Liberal Democrat MP Luke Taylor said the “divisive” motion did not address “the rising threats” of Islamophobia and antisemitism in the UK.
“The Green Party has made antisemitism party policy and become a racist party”, the Movement for Progressive Judaism (MPJ) said, adding that the support of some Jews for the motion did not mean it would not be used to discriminate against others.
However despite the huge controversy over this ridiculous left wing motion, it should be remembered (and it has not been focused on by journalists during this row), that we have seen things with a tinge of similarity before.
In the early 1980s Labour delegates at THEIR conferences passed motions which also took an extreme left wing position, and which were often incorporated into the party’s manifesto at the next election, but were total anathema to our imaginary voter, Mrs Jones in Rhyl.
They were submitted by Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs), trade unions, or affiliated organisations and were often merged into ‘composite motions’ before being debated and voted on. In the past we have had (and not simply in the 80s), public ownership of rail, energy, water, and other utilities, stronger trade union rights and repeal of anti-union laws, a higher minimum wage and expanded workers’ rights, green (excuse use of the word!) ‘New Deal’-style climate policies, increased public spending on health, education, housing, and social care, electoral reform, as well as anti-austerity economic policies.
Strident demands have come from Labour conferences, supporting the abolition of private schooling and private health care. In the famous (or notorious!) left-wing conference motions of the 1970s and 1980s, there were ones demanding Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament, mandatory re-selection of MPs, withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC), and creation of an ‘electoral college’ for choosing the party leader.
In those days, though, some ‘policies’ did find their way into the Labour manifesto, and it is to be hoped that the same does NOT occur with the Green members equating Zionism with racism.
The manifesto to fight the 1983 General Election (GE) was famously dubbed “the longest suicide note in history”.
Things have been tightened up a lot now, but even in the last one for Labour there was language which might be completely impenetrable to Mrs Jones in Rhyl.
A timetable stated: “There are fourteen numbered composite motions in the addendum to Report 2. Reading Sunday, Monday and Tuesday’s agendas against that list left eleven called and three not: Composite 9 on AI, and Composites 12 and 13, which are Public Services split in two”.
So look for the parallels.
The Greens’ motion may say ‘Zionism is racism’, but remember that Labour also marched off to the extreme left at its conferences in the 1980s…
The memories of Phil’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’ (which includes looking for the parallels in stories). Order it now!
Tomorrow – he describes the significance of traditional reporter methods; particularly how writing may be making a comeback today, because records of crucial conversations in a notepad are difficult to hack.
