LONDON: Pro-Palestine solidarity groups within the Labour Party are planning to mount pressure on UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to recognize Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip as genocide during the party’s annual conference next month.
The grassroots groups Momentum, Labour & Palestine, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Palestine Solidarity Campaign will also call Burnham to impose a full arms embargo on Israel.
Burnham, who succeeded Sir Keir Starmer last July, issued an apology that month for the “huge hurt” caused by Labour’s initial response to the Gaza war. However, he refused to label the Israeli military campaign in the Palestinian coastal enclave as genocide.
The former mayor of Manchester will attend the Labour conference next month in Liverpool for the first time as prime minister. During the conference, pro-Palestine groups will urge the government to accept the findings of a UN commission of inquiry, which found that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
Since late 2023, at least 73,420 Palestinians have been killed and 174,369 injured in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestine News Agency on Sunday.
Several MPs told the Guardian that they wanted Burnham to go further than the apology and “acknowledge Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.”
The groups will also request extensive sanctions and a trade ban to cease the UK’s support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza and illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to a model motion planned to be distributed at the conference.
Before taking office, Burnham told the Guardian that the UK needed to put more pressure on the Israeli government and that it was too slow to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
During last year’s Labour Party conference, 30 motions on Palestine from local party groups were dismissed, prompting accusations that the party’s leadership was trying to suppress debate. The conference will test Burnham’s promise not to “stifle debate” within Labour by addressing the conflict in Gaza and Israeli actions in Palestinian territories.
Sasha Das Gupta, co-chair of Momentum, said: “Burnham must not allow the same failures that alienated voters under Starmer to continue. He must listen to the majority of the labour movement and take decisive action on Gaza.”
Dan Iley-Williamson, a political organizer at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: “Burnham’s apology for Labour’s previous stance on Palestine will mean nothing if his government doesn’t decisively break with Keir Starmer’s complicity in Israel’s crimes.
“Burnham could use this Labour conference to show the country he will make this break with Starmer. If he doesn’t, he risks the same fate: plummeting support and a legacy of infamy.”
