• PHIL Rosenberg last week publicly attacked Camden Momentum, (Momentum should side with the Jews over the racists, August 30).

For want of an argument, he resorted instead to mendacious insinuation. To suggest that we might have marched with Mosley’s blackshirts is self-evident nonsense.

In fact, it is a smear from the playbook of Sajid Javid, but it is odd to see a self-professed Labour supporter making common cause with a Tory minister in tarnishing Momentum with the brush of fascism.

Rosenberg mentions the Battle of Cable Street. As public affairs director at the Board of Deputies, he might know that at the time the board discouraged people from turning out to oppose the fascists on the streets.

But that was then, and this is now, and Rosenberg seems to acknowledge the need for a mass movement to push back against the threat of the far right (think Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Benjamin Netanyahu et al). And I’m sure he would agree that actions are more important than words in this respect.

Last month Bookmarks, a socialist bookshop in Camden, was attacked by Trump supporters. Several members of Camden Momentum (including the present writer) were glad to attend the solidarity event.

Strange to say, I do not recall seeing Phil there. Fair enough. Perhaps he was busy. But nor did I notice the BoD mobilising its supporters to join the anti-racist demonstrations against Tommy Robinson’s supporters who have come traipsing through London in the past few months.

Clearly the more things change the more they stay the same. So when it comes to fighting fascism, Camden Momentum does not need to take lessons from absentees.

As to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, one of the text’s original authors, Kenneth Stern, has warned that the document is being used to chill free speech on Palestine.

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK has repeated these concerns, along with several prominent UK-based Palestinian academics and over 30 Jewish organisations from around the globe. Socialists must be consistent internationalists and tribunes of the oppressed, and Camden Momentum is proud to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Phil Rosenberg is unable to offer a coherent response to such reasoned objections. So he resorts to smears instead. If he does manage to make it to Bookmarks, perhaps he might seek a copy of Aesop’s Fables, which contains an instructive tale about the boy who cried wolf.

OWEN HOLLAND
Acting chair, Camden Momentum