09.04.2026

Basic rights are under attack

It is not only the government, the police and the judiciary. Too much of the left takes a ‘free speech … but’ approach. Then there are the AWL scabs, says Carla Roberts

Chris Nineham of Stop the War and Ben Jamal of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been convicted for “breaching police conditions”. This is simultaneously both surprising and unsurprising. It is surprising in so far as it is indeed “entirely grotesque”, as Nineham put it outside Westminster magistrates court on April 1.

Those conditions were utterly bizarre: first, the police agreed that the demo (the 21st organised by the Palestine coalition since 2023) could assemble at the BBC and march to Whitehall - but then they suddenly withdrew that permission. They then suggested reversing the route - only to withdraw that too. Finally, the march was cancelled and reduced to a static protest in Whitehall.

“From there, we proposed a simple, symbolic act”, as Jamal explains: “A delegation of 30 people carrying flowers, walking towards the BBC. That delegation included coalition leaders, MPs, actors, an 87-year-old holocaust survivor - and our own Kevin Courtney carrying a shoe belonging to his infant grandson - a simple, powerful symbol of peace and innocence.” For announcing this intended “symbolic act” from the stage, Jamal was also convicted of two counts of inciting other protestors to breach police conditions.

A video produced by the defence at the trial clearly shows the police waving the delegation through. But later, more than 70 were arrested. Alex Kenny (Counterfire) and Sophie Bolt (secretary of the Campaign Against Nuclear Armament) will now also face trial on the same charges.

The Met Police said it placed those conditions “after factoring in ‘the cumulative impact’ on Jewish Londoners, adding that the march was in the vicinity of synagogues”. Utter nonsense, of course - for a start, there are over 100 synagogues in London. Define “vicinity”.

No, this is very much part and parcel of the Labour government’s turn to the right - and specifically the attempt to outlaw, criminalise and silence all those critical of Israel (the key ally of US-led imperialism in the Middle East, of course). In that respect, neither the charge nor the conviction are surprising - this is down to political pressure and has to be seen in context. There is also the ongoing drumming up of false accusations of anti-Semitism; the banning of Palestine Action and the attack on the jury trials. The latter is being sold to the public as an important tool to deal with the ‘backlog’ in the courts.

Part of the reason there even exists such a growing backlog is, of course, the fact that there have been hundreds and hundreds of pointless charges against pensioners for holding up placards declaring ‘I support Palestine Action’. And juries also have that pesky habit of finding protestors ‘not guilty’ - not always, but often enough to be an embarrassing thorn in the government’s side.¹ Nineham and Jamal are appealing. We hope they will be successful - a victory for them will be a victory for all of us.

No-platforming

This story has a secondary, even more worrying aspect to it - because in this instance it is not the state attacking the Palestine movement, but parts of the left itself. Alex Kenny, former member of the executive of the National Education Union, was invited to speak about the charges against Nineham, Jamal, Bolt and himself at the March 31 NEU conference. But a motion was moved from the floor to stop him - by members of the pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.

They were quite sneaky about it too. On conference floor they argued that “it is undemocratic and wrong for conference committee to add a speaker to the agenda - taking time away from motions and amendments submitted and prioritised by districts - without conference itself having a chance to vote on whether it wants this to happen.”²

That is deeply disingenuous: No doubt, hearing and voting on the complaint took a lot longer than the five minutes Kenny was down to speak. It is also not the real reason they tried to no-platform him. They were more open on various WhatsApp groups and online: “… we should have a vote on whether to hear the speaker, and if we do, Educators’ Fightback [the AWL’s front in NEU] will be voting against. The proposed speaker is Alex Kenny, and trans members and allies in particular have good reason to object to someone with a history of pushing anti-trans views to be given precious time at our union’s conference.”

The AWL has form when it comes to witch-hunting, of course: During the anti-Semitism smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the left in the Labour Party, it played the role of ‘useful idiot’ for the right and the pro-Zionist lobby. It justified the witch-hunt by repeatedly pointing fingers at alleged ‘anti-Semites’ like Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson and Jackie Walker, while always just stopping short of calling for their expulsions.

As far as we know, they did not present any ‘evidence’ for Kenny’s alleged transphobia - we suspect him being a member of Counterfire is enough these days. Counterfire has certainly developed a position that is very different from that of its former host organism, the Socialist Workers Party, which has thrown itself uncritically behind the identity politics of many trans activists. Counterfire’s Lindsey German, who usually covers these issues, holds a feminism-adjacent, relatively soft ‘gender critical’ view, which boils down to ‘defend some women’s single-sex spaces, while also defending trans rights’.³

Trans issues

We do not think this is the correct emphasis, considering the expanding campaign against trans people - but to call this “transphobic” is stretching the term beyond what is rational or useful. It is certainly not the first time we have seen Counterfire being dismissed as such. We have to say, we are much more concerned about its popular frontist politics, which makes it pivot right on many occasions - like Preston councillor Michael Lavalette arguing against MPs on a skilled workers’ wage, because it could “put off MPs who would want to defect to Your Party”.⁴

Incredibly, 300 NEU delegates supported the attempt to no-platform Kelly and he was deinvited - despite the fact that he was obviously not down to speak about Counterfire’s stance on the trans question. Some of those delegates have since come out to state that they only did so because they believed the ‘official’ time-saving reason. But many more will have felt very nervous about being seen to defend somebody who has been tarnished with what is becoming the worst of all political labels.

Strangely, in his article in the Morning Star, Kenny does not mention that it was the AWL that conspired to no-platform him. All he says is: “Unfortunately, reactionary forces prevented me from speaking using a procedural amendment via standing orders.”⁵ We have no objection to calling the AWL “reactionary”, but Kenny’s article gives the wrong impression that this was an attack by the hard right (though it could be argued that this too is a fitting description for the AWL!). Perhaps he was worried about being seen as ‘sectarian’ if he criticises another group. We disagree - it is incredibly important to be open and honest about such things. Otherwise, nobody will have learned anything from this sorry episode.

But Kenny also posted his article on Facebook - and the comments underneath leave no doubt about the AWL’s role. “Shame and disgrace on those reactionary sectarians who Always Were Liars [sic!],” comments Alex Gordon, new general secretary of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain - which comes in a lot heavier on the transphobia scales. Lindsey German ‘liked’ this comment: “I thought it was the AWL, an organisation that regards itself as part of the revolutionary left. Although it is a small organisation, its trans fanaticism is shamefully shared by a significant part of the left, including the Green Party and the Grassroots Left faction of the Your Party.”

The fight over the future of Your Party had somewhat lulled the ‘terf wars’, with groups like Counterfire, the SWP and Trans Liberation Group all supporting the Grassroots Left. But now the left has lost, cancel culture is likely to come back with a vengeance - and Kenny’s no-platforming is the first big scalp. All the more important that all genuine Marxists renew their emphasis to call for the left to adopt a democratic culture that embraces free speech and open debate and rejects banning ‘bad thoughts’.

Free speech

We have a way to go, as a very strange article on the Counterfire website shows. Under the title, ‘When denial of free speech fails the test of solidarity’, Rob Horsfield argues that not letting Kenny speak was “a serious mistake” - because it “weakens the much-needed unity we need to fight against ruling class attacks”. Apparently, “the main problem is one of positions as a substitute for politics - the idea of good politics as having the perfect positions on everything, rather than a political approach focused on pushing ahead.”⁶

The comrades want free speech - for themselves. They clearly do not see it as an important political principle - and certainly not one that should go hand-in-hand with open criticism and public debate. Quite the opposite. Neither Rob Horsfield nor Alex Kenny for that matter give the impression that they think the ‘trans question’ should even be discussed. The far right is on the rise, so we should all get together, bury our differences, forget about having “perfect positions on everything” and just “push ahead”.

Push ahead to do what, exactly? Support anybody but Reform, as the SWP’s new front, ‘Stop Reform UK’, argues? This is certainly not the way to build the kind of democratic and transparent socialist party that could actually present a viable alternative to Reform. A real party of the working class would have to be able to contain different views on all sorts of questions - including the ‘trans issue’. This is, after all, hotly contested throughout society. Of course there would be members of such a party with crass ideas on all sorts of issues. The best way to defeat wrong ideas is to take them on openly, debate them in front of the working class, so that everybody can learn from it. Brushing important differences under the carpet is the worst possible way to deal with them.

But for most of our comrades, calls for ‘free speech’ go very much hand in hand with calls for ‘no-platforming’ (often meaning the actual banning of certain groups). Usually, this is reserved for ‘fascists’, of course. We have argued plenty that this is entirely the wrong way to deal with political ideas - it is likely to achieve the opposite effect (if it achieves anything): it makes them into martyrs. Especially if the state and the mainstream press sing from the same hymn sheet, as they do when it comes to rightwing forces like National Action, The Base and System Resistance Network. The more they are vilified, the more attractive they become to those who feel entirely alienated by the establishment.

This fetishisation of no-platform tactics against fascists is ‘patient zero’ for cancel culture - the first context in which it became acceptable for members of the left to excuse themselves from their duty to engage in the battle of ideas with opponents and enemies. Physical defence is another matter entirely. To defend our communities, our marches, our meetings, our picket lines it is quite right to have a fighting agreement with all manner of different forces, not least with those who would otherwise be victims of fascist violence. Apart from defence it implies no wider political unity.

But, when it comes to the battle of ideas, we favour unrestricted freedom … crucially the freedom to criticise.

www.stopwar.org.uk/article/the-most-sustained-legal-offensive-against-leaders-of-social-movements-since-the-1950s.↩︎
www.workersliberty.org/blogs/educators-fightback/2026-03-31/shenanigans-stopped-now.↩︎
For a longer discussion, see ‘How not to win arguments’ Weekly Worker February 23 2023 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1431/how-not-to-win-arguments).↩︎
‘Avoid the quota trap’ Weekly Worker November 13 2025 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1561/avoid-the-quota-trap).↩︎
morningstaronline.co.uk/article/free-palestine-end-repression-and-protect-free-speech-our-unions.↩︎
www.counterfire.org/article/when-denial-of-free-speech-fails-the-test-of-solidarity.↩︎