FOR a few months, it looked as if Britain had a chance to be led in the future by a politician, who, unlike Owen Smith and the majority of the PLP, would never press the nuclear button, would never take Britain into foreign wars of choice, which have led to revenge terrorist attacks on this country, and would try to lay the foundations for the establishment of a juster and more caring society.

I am sorry to say it, but I think that hope has now gone, as his enemies have effectively united against him.

Such as those for whom the poisoning of the ex spy and his daughter has encouraged to revive the Cold War; the British Board of Deputies which has found traction in its claim that the Labour Party is riddled with anti-Semitism and cock a hoop presume to issue commands to Jeremy — that Ken Livingstone should be ejected from the Labour Party.

Then there are Jeremy's enemies in the Parliamentary Labour Party who tried their best to get rid of him as soon as he was elected until he did better than expected in the last election, and who now see their way with new allies to triumph over him at last.

There is something factitious about the claims that the Labour Party is riddled with anti-Semitism.

I can only say that I have moved in radical circles for 60 years and have never heard an anti-Semitic remark and I know that the most radical elements of the Labour Party have been conspicuous in their opposition to to all forms of racism and colonialism.

They led the fight in Britain against the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

Radicals have a passion for justice and invariably support the oppressed and the underdog.

Because radicals have this passion, they rightly see the Palestinians as the underdog, the victims of Israeli racism and imperialism.

It is the policy of the Israeli government to recruit Jews worldwide to the view that this assessment of Israel's policy towards the Palestinians as itself evidence of anti-Semitism.

Thus, when Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland in an address at an American University said that "the root cause of the Arab- Israeli conflict was the occupation", she was viciously attacked.

What she said may be true, but it is anti-Semitic to tell the truth.

And when Livingstone, making use of Francis Nicosia's The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, referred to the undoubted fact that Hitler supported Zionism in the '30s, the British Board of Deputies insists that he should be ejected from the Labour Party for saying such a thing, thus condemning history for being anti-Semitic.

Though there are clearly a small minority whose anger causes them regrettably to use the vicious tropes of traditional anti-Semitism, their anger is still political and not racist.

If it were racist, they would use such tropes against Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein and Avi Shlaim —distinguished Jews for whom not tribalism, but humanity truth and justice come first and whose condemnation of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians is absolute.

I salute them

Malcolm Pittock

St James Avenue

Bolton