Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) attacks pro-Palestinian activists

On Saturday 4 November, Betty Hunter, PSC National Secretary, launched an unprincipled attack on the Marks and Spencer boycott campaign led by Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! supporters. Speaking at the end of an LSE day-school she rounded on an FRFI speaker who had called on those attending the event to also support the Thursday evening pickets of Oxford Street M&S. Far from expressing support for this event, Hunter called on those present to boycott it, claiming that the picket is seen as an ‘anti-semitic action, because M&S is a Jewish company’. She also claimed that the picketers bought the police harassment and Zionist intimidation that they experience on a weekly basis onto themselves for targeting M&S.

Coming at a time when dozens of Palestinians were being slaughtered in Beit Hanoun, Hunter’s purpose was to kill off any pro-Palestinian solidarity action taking place outside of PSC control. M&S is not a Jewish company: Hunter knows this. It has been publicly-owned since 1926. It is also the biggest British retail trader with Israel, and the principal pillar of the Britain-Israel Chamber of Commerce. Its links with Zionism stretch back to its foundation, and mark it out from other companies which still have a strong Jewish background such as Tescos. In suggesting that the pickets are anti-semitic, Hunter merely echoes the Zionists who call all opponents of Israel anti-semitic.

Under Hunter’s leadership the PSC has become a moribund organisation. Its principal concern is not to do anything that upsets the Labour Party and in particular Labour’s utterly spineless and ever-diminishing left wing. The PSC’s hatred of FRFI and its Victory to the Intifada (VTI) campaign outweighs any desire to build anti-imperialist solidarity with the Palestinian people. In Manchester, PSC supporters preferred to hold a stall of half a dozen members rather than join a 150-strong VTI picket fifty yards away at the height of the onslaught on Lebanon. Such sectarianism is a hallmark of those who will not seriously challenge British imperialism because to do so would force them to break with Labour. Hunter and the PSC belong to a trend which in the past included the Anti-Apartheid Movement and today includes the Cuba Solidarity Campaign: a trend which will stop at nothing to destroy any challenge to Labour and British imperialism.

We urge all those who wish to challenge the Zionist terrorists and their Labour supporters to support our pickets and challenge British imperialism’s support for the racist Zionist state, and to call for a boycott of the pillar of Zionism, M&S.

Victory to the Palestinian People!