Dear Angela Rayner MP,
My name is George Harold Millman. I'm an actor, scriptwriter and political activist.
I am writing to you concerning the current situation in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in Palestine, and particularly in relation to two matters. Firstly, I was very disturbed by a recent video, filmed on 25 January, in which you were confronted by a number of protesters during a speech in your constituency. The protesters were ejected by security whilst you looked on and said 'thank you' repeatedly.
I'm always upset to see people treated in this way when trying to express dissatisfaction with their elected representatives, even if that dissatisfaction is being expressed in a confrontational way - I think that the public would generally be more satisfied with their politicians if they felt that said politicians were listening to them and respectful of them. However, there was one particular protester for whom I was particularly shocked and disturbed by your reaction. His name is Dalloul al-Neder, and recently his family in Palestine were killed in the ongoing Israeli campaign against the Palestinian people.
Dalloul was trying to show pictures of his family members who had been killed. You had the opportunity to demonstrate the Labour Party as a party of the people, and yourself as a politician of great empathy and compassion. But you did not do this. You stood there, emotionless and silent, and watched him being removed from the venue. I want to ask, in as polite a way as I can, how you were capable of showing this little feeling when faced with a fellow human being in pain? You are a mother and a grandmother; I'd like you to think about how you would feel if you had been killed, and one of your grieving relatives was treated like this when trying to talk about you. Even if as a senior Labour politician you weren't able to help him in that precise moment, you could have asked him to stay and talk to you afterwards so that you could listen to him talk and represent his feelings back to the heart of the Labour Party - or at the very least, asked security not to be so rough with him. Why did you not do that?
In your reaction to Dalloul, you demonstrated to me that you are not who I thought you were. When Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of the Labour Party, you were always my favourite member of the Shadow Cabinet. I thought you were a phenomenal Shadow Education Secretary at that time, and I even remember confessing to friends around that point that I respected you more even more than I respected Jeremy. When Keir Starmer took over as leader in 2020, I quickly came to realise that I couldn't support a lot of his actions as leader - but I took some solace in the fact that we still had you as Deputy Leader. As a working-class woman who left school with no qualifications, was a teenage mum and had a lot of experience working with the trade unions, I had no doubt that you'd be a wonderfully warm and tough Deputy Leader, keeping the party in shape and reminding those in the top positions that ultimately you're a party of the many, not the few. I have truly never been as ashamed of having faith in any politician - I think the only other time since I've been politically active was with Nick Clegg over university tuition fees in 2010, but I actually think the callousness of your reaction to Dalloul al-Neder is greater than anything I saw from Clegg. In Clegg, I just see a very poor strategist who perhaps didn't fully understand the harm that he was doing. In your case, I know that you do understand. Following this confrontation, it was revealed on social that you have actually met Dalloul in the past; in 2019, you visited his shop, posed for a picture with him and told him that you believed in the unequivocal freedom of Palestinians. Did you ever truly believe that, or did you just say in in 2019 because that was Labour's position at the time?
Talking of Labour's position at the time, I want to ask more generally what Labour's position over this genocide is (and I use the word genocide consciously, as I believe that what we're seeing is a genocide). On a recent talk show, you were asked if the Labour Party believes that what we're seeing is a genocide. You responded that you don't know, but that the ICJ made a good case for that fact. I would have preferred you to say publicly that it is a genocide; however, I do respect your diplomatic answer in this case, especially as we have an international court case to work alongside. I am at least glad that you acknowledged that it could be. However, your Labour colleague Kate Osamor, the MP for Edmonton, was recently suspended from the party after she included Gaza in a list of genocides in a letter for Holocaust Memorial Day (alongside Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia). If, as you inferred on that talk show, what we're seeing is perhaps a genocide and that we need to remain open to the possibility it might be, does this not mean that Labour MPs should be free to say that they believe it is if they so wish? Are Labour MPs free to say this? If not, why not, if this position is in line with the ICJ's findings?
Labour's position on what is happening in the Gaza Strip is something that I have found it very distressing to watch, as have many others that I've spoken to. Especially given that this is an election year, I think this is something that Labour should think about very carefully. Having said that, I think Labour should take policy positions more because they're morally right than because they're vote winners - but in any case, I don't believe that Labour's current position is a vote winner. The only way I could ever consider voting Labour at the next election would be if my own local candidate was prepared to publicly condemn Israel for what they're currently doing - I do not know at the time of writing if that is the case.
Best wishes,
George Harold Millman
I wrote this to Angela Rayner MP, the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and current Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, at the time of publication. I will update this blog with any reply I receive.
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