Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of the Unite trade union, said it was wrong that Corbyn-backing campaigners had protested against the Israeli government and Donald Trump but not against Islamist terrorism and oppressive regimes in the Middle East. Failure to do so had left a “vacuum” for the far right to exploit, he said.
He said: “They say ‘you’re protesting austerity, I see you advertising the protest against Trump, I see you protesting against the Israeli government ... against this, against that but where were you protesting when somebody used a car as a weapon to mow people down on Waterloo Bridge? Where was the left? Where were we? Where were we when the Manchester bomb went off? Where were we on Westminster Bridge? Where was the left?”
Calling on left-wing supporters to stand up against the Saudi and Iranian regimes, he added: “Where’s the left criticising the state of Iran, for instance, who whipped trade unionists for taking strike action, who denies women human rights, who runs an obscene regime? Or Saudi Arabia, where we welcomed the head of Saudi Arabia to the UK? Did we protest? No we didn’t protest. Why not? What’s so sensitive in the left about having a discussion about these issues that leaves a vacuum that the right, for no reasons, are only too willing to fill?”
Referring to far-right groups, he added: “They’re filling a vacuum that in part is being left by us. We need to talk to those people who are attracted by it and stop talking to ourselves. We don’t do it, and it’s uncomfortable.”
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