Jon Lansman
Jonathan Lansman (born 9 July 1957) is a British political activist. He is best known for having worked on Jeremy Corbyn's successful 2015 Labour Party leadership campaign and subsequently founded the pro-Corbyn organisation Momentum. Lansman has worked for both Tony Benn and Michael Meacher, and was a prominent supporter of Benn in the early 1980s. He was a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee from 2018 to 2020.
Quotes
[edit]- Whilst there are of course plenty of dissident Jews in Britain, my observation is that neither the vast majority of individual members of JVL nor the organisation itself can really be said to be part of the Jewish community since the organisation was set up to oppose the conclusion that I'm afraid that every significant Jewish community organisation has arrived at about the Labour Party.
I do think it is possible to eradicate antisemitism in the Labour Party and to defend the Labour Left's project but not by denial of the problem within the Labour Party. - JVL behaves as if it speaks for Jewish socialists. It does not. And too many of its members self-define as 'Jews' only to attack other Jews.
- Leaked communication (4 May 2019), as cited in "Lansman launches attack on Jewish Voice for Labour", The Jewish Chronicle (21 June 2019)
- The letter was written to Jewish Voice for Labour co-chairs Jenny Manson and Leah Levane. JVL had suggested in a previous communication that Lansman no longer reflected the views of members of Momentum.
- I do accept that there were antisemitic left activists around the country, and undoubtedly, they were there in Riverside and Liverpool.
I wish we'd never had Momentum branches. It was never our decision to set them up – they set themselves up. We didn't have the resources for a compliance unit.- In answer to a question at the Jewish Labour Movement conference from Dame Louise Ellman (8 January 2023), as cited in "Momentum founder refuses to apologise for ‘hatred’ of activists", The Jewish Chronicle (10 January 2023).
- Dame Louise Ellmann is the former Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside.
- I immersed myself at an early age in the history of centuries of Jewish suffering. Expulsion from England in 1290, from Spain in 1492 alongside the Muslims. On and on until the ultimate destruction, before, finally, sanctuary arrived with the 1947 UN decision to partition Palestine and create a refuge for Holocaust survivors.
- In the 1960s, the left backed Israel. Aged 10 in 1967, I cut out news stories each day of the six-day war. In 1973, Israel, caught off guard by Egyptian and Syrian forces in the Yom Kippur war, was again the underdog, supported in Britain by the Labour opposition but not by the Heath government.
- "How can I, as a leftwing Jew, show support for both Palestinians and Israelis?", The Guardian (20 November 2023)
