The temptations of Facebook

I am back after a couple of weeks in France -  and happily managed to dodge the royal birth and the deferential cheer-leading that goes with it. I have no more to say about the birth of the new prince - and you'll see why in a minute:

These days, thanks to smart phones, going on holiday is not the isolating experience that it used to be. Rather than a hermit-like couple of weeks away from the news, thanks to Facebook and blogs, you remain connected to the world albeit through a rather peculiar lens.

So my awareness of the royal birth derived from what I read through the posts of my Facebook friends. Unsurprisingly, most of these are of a generally left/liberal/republican persuasion and a significant number of them have a reasonable sense of humour. But far too many of them felt obliged to post 'me-too' posts either taking the piss out of the new prince or making all-too obvious points about the birth. And if I had been at home, I would probably have done exactly the same thing.

But with the benefit of a bit of a distance I realised that we really don't need all this. All those posts may make us chuckle for a few seconds -  and that's fine -  but  more worryingly they give us a sense of smug self-righteousness that in so doing we have somehow struck a blow for something or other.  I  recall that back in the 1980s Billy Bragg used to sing something about 'wearing badges is not enough in times like these'. Maybe Facebook posts are the new badges.

Ed finally breaks the union link?

It would be an ironic twist of history that Ed-the-geek, the non-entity who crept into leadership only  because he was the least offensive option to the power-brokers of the Labour Party, should be the one who crosses the Rubicon and breaks the links with the unions.

Let's be clear that the arrangement whereby trade union members had affiliated membership of the party and where local branches affiliated to local parties and made up the general management committees of constituency parties never made Labour the worker-controlled party that the rhetoric would suggest. 

From its earliest days there was a mixture in the party membership of the middle class and workers. In earlier time the middle class component was drawn from intellectuals, bohemians and that layer of the middle class engaged in 'public service professions'. It is very different today. As both  UNITEs Len McCluskey and the CWU's Billy Hayes have pointed out in the past few days, Labour is now run by and for not working people but by a political class -  and politics has become a posh boy's game. 

Possibly the rot goes back to Harold Wilson - the working class grammar school boy who never actually worked outside of the union and party machine. Even coming from a working class background and having worked in a proper job has historically been no guarantee that individuals would continue to represent workers' interests - Ernest Bevin springs to mind as personifying the phenomenon of the thoroughly capitalist and collaborationist union baron.

But - in spite of all these caveats - the union link did mean something. The fact that local parties were structurally tied to local unions meant that at times some sort of control could be exercised. And so at certain times by a fragile,  indirect and imperfect process, the party was forced to reflect workers' interests - the 1945 government is the obvious example of this, but so too are the battles within the party in the 1970s.

Miliband's announcement yesterday  only goes to complete a process begun by Kinnock in the 1980s to make Labour finally free of this increasing  tenuous link. Surely nobody on the Left can now argue that there is any life still remaining in the Labour corpse. 

It defied all logic that some elements were arguing that this corpse could somehow be revived. Ironically it was McCluskey's own belief in this - brought to a head by the Falkirk affair - that has been the catalyst for Miliband's announcement. Incidentally McCluskey's welcoming reaction to the announcement may at first seem bizarre - but of course the removal of mass party membership will not represent the end of union funding only the breaking of automatic union funding. In fact it may even boost the power of union bosses in giving them the power to opt to make donations to party funds in return for influencing policies - possibly taking Labour even closer to the type of lobbying and power-play machinations seen in the Democratic party in the US. 

The only upside of all this is that it might just kill of the  few remaining illusions that people may have left in Labour.

Al-Andalus: 'The ornament of the world'

I am stocking up my holiday reading -  one of the perks of my new life is I can say that reading history is now actually part of my job. At the moment I am reading The Ornament of The World - a history of Muslim Spain.

It's appropriate timing for all sorts of reasons: Every few days we hear another story about Gove's plans to re-orientate school history towards Britain's glorious and civilizing relationship with the rest of the world, and even more worrying every few days there seems to be another story about another attack on a mosque, Islamic school or community centre. You don't have to be a paranoid liberal to see a connection between the two trends. 

Which is why re-telling the largely forgotten  story of Al-Andalus might just be a timely addition to the school curriculum. Whilst most of Medieval Europe was in the grip of a near Church-monopoly on culture and ideology, Al-Andalus was for nearly 800 years, a prototype multicultural society where Muslims, Jews and Christians not only co-existed but actually interacted to produce a flourishing centre of arts and knowledge.

And the major threats to this society were religious hardliners of all faiths: Invading Fundamentalist Berber Muslims from North Africa who objected to the tolerance of the Ummayad regime, and Jews and Christians who objected to their own communities' adoption of Arabic culture. Ironically the final downfall of Al-Andalus was at the hands of the much celebrated El-Cid - a mercenary who had spent much of his life fighting for Muslim princes who bore a Muslim name.

I am aware that it is always dangerously ahistorical to transplant our own values to an age which was so fundamentally different to our own. But in these dark days of prejudice and mis-information it might just be worth trying to redress the balance with a look at a story that challenges the lie of an inevitable 'clash of civilisations'. It's a lie perpetuated both by the likes of Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, and in a more respectable and articulate form, by Michael Gove and Nial Fergusson.

The sinister face of British policing

Talking to some of my Turkish friends about the reports  of police brutality in the recent protests, you might get the impression that our own British bobbies are cut of a qualitatively different cloth.

Then just a couple of days apart, we get two shocking stories about the sinister machinations of our own police forces: 

Firstly, that an undercover cop was involved in writing the leaflet that prompted the McLibel case - the longest ever libel trial in British history. And secondly that another one was assigned the mission of digging up any dirt he could find that might discredit the Lawrence family's campaign to bring the racist murderers of their son to justice.

There's an element of humour in the first story, is so far that maybe McDonald's should now sue the Met police. Although I doubt the activists who devoted over a year of their lives to defending themselves  will find it quite so funny.  We already knew that the police had infiltrated anti-fascist organisations around the time of the Welling demo - but the news that they had done the same to the Stephen Lawrence campaign is beyond belief. Especially given what we now know about the police racism, incompetence and corruption that ran throughout their investigation.

Just as the British ruling class have been around longer than most, and consequently generally manage to keep us in our place with a seemingly lighter touch than in many countries - so maybe the police can afford to keep the water cannon and the tear gas back in reserve whilst they concentrate on 'black-ops.'

And if that sounds all a bit too paranoid, we should remember that  British history is riddled with instances of the state using infiltrators and provocateurs. Even before we had a police force, the Jacobean secret service connived in Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder plot to provoke an anti-Catholic back lash.  And government spies manipulated an emerging radical-democrat movement in the Cato Street Conspiracy as an excuse to bring in repressive legislation.

Of course all of this was in an age before the incentives of  book deals and fifteen minutes of fame to tease police whistle-blowers out of the woodwork - I predict more of these disturbing stories will follow ...

Solidarity with Taksim Square

In my part of North London we have a large Turkish and Kurdish community, with a whole host of very visible political and community organisations . 

Over the past few years I have had the privilege of working quite closely with one of them. They have unfailingly taken the position of working in a non-sectarian way with any section of the Left - or anyone else come to that - who shares their broad aims when it comes to local campaigns, and they have put their enviable facilities and resources at our disposal.

Very occasionally you get from them just a hint of exasperation at the sometimes pathetic nature of the British Left. Whilst we are arguing about the number of revisionists who can balance on a pinhead, and sometimes struggle to  mobilise two men and a dog, they regard any turnout of less than about fifty to a meeting as something of an embarrassment. 

And they are quite right. In so many ways their organisation is a microcosm of what a healthy new movement could and should be like in this country - part cultural, part social, part educational,  wholly inclusive and  none the less wholly political for it.

And I'm writing this because right now I am awe of their mobilisation of solidarity for what is going is Taksim Square. Frankly, they make the rest of us look like we are in a coma.

Back in the game

Blogging has slipped onto the back burner this month.

It's the point in the year when my teaching training got to crunch time - not quite qualified yet but on the last home straight - and the scramble to get a job for September before the recruitment window closes. Happily, after a stressful few weeks I've managed to do this. 

After my redundancy two years ago and dodging about as a member of the precariat and as a born-again student,  I will finally be back in the ranks of the PAYE wage slaves again. And it feels good. Doing something after all those years that I actually give a toss about, and with the added bonus of doing it locally and for the first time in thirty years working in the same community as the one I live in rather than commuting.

But yet again, I feel a twinge of resentment when I hear teaching contrasted with the 'real world' - or when I hear Gove whinging about the standard of recruits to the teaching profession. Because over the past few weeks I've felt on several occasions that getting an entry level teaching job is on a par with joining the SAS. 

In the real world that I once inhabited interviews consisted of a quick phone call and a twenty minute chat with a manager - or if you were a manager and going for a job paying twice the salary of a teacher, maybe sending a CV and a half hour chat in a bar. 

On the other hand for the past few weeks I've been going to interviews where I had to teach lessons on subjects I had no previous knowledge of to kids I have never met, which were then deconstructed by a panel under an Ofsted-shaped microscope lens. Followed by a panel interview and if I was really unlucky, a student panel too. And that circus typically lasted the whole day as the candidates were kept hanging around like X-factor wannabes awaiting a final decision from Simon Cowell.

But it's done with now -  and I'm back in the game.

Farage - fool or Fascist ?

Many years ago reading 'England Your England' I thought George Orwell was on to something when he said that in this country socialism would have to have a distinctly English flavour.  A tradition rooted in John Bull, John Lillburne and  William Morris as much Marx, Lenin or Trotsky. And much as I respect all those dead Russians - I agree with him.

Conversely the results for UKIP this week lead me to think that reaction in this country will also wear a similarly English face. 

The real threat to the working class has never really been social inadequates with Adolf Hitler's initials tattooed on their necks. It is the saloon bar bigots in blazers sipping ale from tankards. 

Whilst it is clear that Boris's bumbling persona cunningly  conceals an intelligent - and thoroughly nasty - political operator - the jury is still out on Nigel Farage.  I can't make my mind up if he really is the Alan Partridge of the new British Far-Right or if this is a genius construct to woe the ranks of alienated Middle England. 

If the former then I have no doubt he will be replaced as UKIP grows - either way we should be worried. An effective populist-nationalist movement has never really  achieved critical mass in this country. They might just do it yet.

Tories. Nasty then. Nasty now.

Maggie may be dead and buried - but the spirit of the thoroughly nasty party is alive and well.

I should know better, but I fell of my chair when I read the extraordinary story about Sussex  Tory Councillor John Cherry. He's the NIMBY racist who caused a minor shit storm in his reaction to the news that a South London Academy was going to set up a boarding school - for inner city kids - in his little patch of Middle England.

In an echo of the Smethick by-election Cherry says that the prospect of letting these kids - who he says will be 98% Black and Asian - out into the local villages will create a 'sexual volcano.'

He does concede that it wouldn't be so bad if these bussed-in 'ethnics' were Chinese or Indian because apparently these groups have a hard-working academic ethic. But he is quite clear that he doesn't want any Pakaistanis - because that group are 'uncertain what hard work is'.

Sadly, the interaction of class, culture and institutional racism means that there is a grain of truth in his observations about the over and under achievement of various groups. Although if he did his homework further he'd have found that one of the most under-achieving groups of all is the  "white British'.

Councillor Cherry has swiftly apologised and resigned and the Tories are of course now desperately back-peddling.  Cherry's views certainly don't sit well with the metro-savvy Notting Hill-ite wing. But I suspect that Cherry  just said what many of the Tory loyalists in the shires actually think.

Ding Dong. Trafalgar Square.

Last night, like many other right-minded people  I was wandering around Trafalgar Square looking for a celebration that was never going to be truly adequate.

About thirty years ago I was planning a very different kind of celebration.The 1983 'Falklands election' was the first one I was able to vote in. I had just turned 18 and somewhat still naive. I was possibly one of the few who was confidently expecting a Labour victory on the night of 9th June. Even in those pre-Miners's Strike days, how could it be otherwise ? 

So we stayed up all  night at a friend's house watching the results come in, fortified by way too many cans of Carlsberg Special Brew as celebration turned to sorrow-drowning. For some reason we went into school the next day - looking very much the worse for wear -  and were advised by a friendly teacher that it would probably be in everyone's interests if we discretely went home.

So it was with a certain sense of closure - both melancholic and contented - that I was at Trafalgar Square, along with my own 18 year old daughter and her friends. If only it wasn't thirty years too late.

Let's take a moment to rejoice

Having spent most of my adult life waiting for this moment - Maggie Maggie Maggie Out Out Out has been ringing in my ears since I was 16 - now that it's actually come I feel a bit of an anticlimax.

As a historian I am certainly  not inhibited in talking ill of the dead. I enjoy the childishness of all that stuff on Facebook as much as the next man. Although I do think that Tony Benn hits the nail on the head with his characteristically sober and dignified epitaph:

"Mrs Thatcher was a politician that believed what she thought, did what she said she was going to do and that gave her a certain integrity. However, she used that trust to make war on the working class. She taught us the meaning of class war through campaigns against the miners and the introduction of the Poll Tax. We are still dealing with the effects of that 'Neo-Con' economic experiment".

'Integrity' I would add only in the perverse sense of an enemy that looks you in the eye before stabbing you in the guts. As opposed to the turncoat Blairs, Browns and Millibands who stab you in the back. 

And that's my sense of anti-climax. Thatcher may be dead but Thatcherism is all too much alive and well. Still for tonight at least - let's permit ourselves a bit of time to rejoice.

A lot of balls

A new experience for me this weekend - I visited a pawnbrokers. 

That old-fashioned description wasn't what was over the door - but that's what it was.  It offers of course a very old-fashioned service, but one that - in my neck of the woods  anyway - is depressingly flourishing. In fact along with fried chicken shops and betting shops, places offering pay day loans at interest rates of over 1000% are just about the only enterprises that do prosper around here.

Thankfully I wasn't there for a loan - I wanted to collect a Western Union transfer from Greece.

I wanted to  - but I couldn't because I could not persuade them that the name on the paperwork from the sender - 'Chris' - was a universally acknowledged abbreviation of the name on my driving license 'Christopher'. Even my signature on the very same license  'Chris' was not enough to assuage their jobs-worthiness. Nor were my pleas that only the DVLA, the Passport office and my grandmother got away with calling me Christopher - and she's been dead for twelve years.

So I left empty handed. I am nor sure whether I should be relieved that bureaucratic bullshit seems to trump old-fashioned avarice. Or doubly depressed at a new corporate  take on old-fashioned parasitism.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

It was always going to be a risk: 

Taking a bunch of cynical street wise London teenagers to an art-house cinema to watch two hours of largely black and white talking-heads in a worthy  documentary.

But getting my GCSE class to watch Ken Loach's 'Spirit of 45' paid off. You couldn't make it up - the kids came out wide-eyed and buzzing: Had it really happened ? And how come people had let that bitch Thatcher get away with destroying it all ?

As I walked back to where my bike was parked I have to confess to being choked with emotion: 

Satisfaction that a generation whose experience was so different, could be inspired by these old people talking about socialism. Melancholy for that older generation - my Mum and Dad's - who had seen their dreams fall apart and who we will never get a chance to properly thank. And anger for my own generation - those 40-somethings who bought into the 80's Thatcherite dream that shat on it all.

Thanks Mr Loach - you confirmed that I am in the right job.

No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid*

Ironic. As mentioned in my last post I was going to interview my dad to use his reminiscences as a source for one of my classes. One that I had heard before was of  him going to a meeting as a teenager shortly after the war to hear Aneurin Bevan speak on the creation of the health service - a defining moment which persuaded him to join the Labour Party. 

I was going to brave the icy weather and ride down to Kent when I got a call from his carer to come early because he had been taken into hospital. Fortunately he was able to be discharged the same day. But whilst spending a fairly harrowing day in the very same AndE department from which my mum was admitted and never returned, we had an announcement advising us that waiting times were three hours and that anyone waiting to be seen should go to another hospital ten miles away, or to see their GP. 

And next week I will be on a march next Saturday  to protest the cuts at the Whittington Hospital - roughly a life time on and from my dad going to that meeting ...

* These words from Aneurin Bevan's 'In Place of Fear'

History of our own

I am happy to be working in a school at the moment that promotes the kind of History that would get Mr Grove foaming at the mouth. No kings, queens, Isambard Kingdom Brunel or David Livingston. 

The student population is largely Black and the school makes no apology for featuring Black history heavily in the curriculum. And not just the usual GCSE focus on 1960s Civil Rights but Black British History - pre-colonial Africa, slavery in the Caribbean, decolonisation and post-war immigration. It shouldn't really be a surprise then  that as a result, History is popular at the school, and the kids are actually keen to take part in the lessons.

This attempt to connect what is being taught to student's own experiences and the world today is not restricted to Black History. Yesterday we were discussing the possibility of  a school trip to a viewing of Ken Loach's new film 'Spirit of 45'. And this weekend I was interviewing my Dad to use a source for his memories of hearing Aneurin Bevan speak at a public meeting at that time.

This teacher-training business is probably the most all-consuming and draining thing I've ever done -  but it certainly beats the crap out of what I used to put up with in my previous life ...

Cardinal O'Brien - inappropriate ?

I hate the expression 'inappropriate'.  It is particularly over-used in schools. And in more general usage it has become a euphemism for anything from 'a bit naughty' to 'absolutely fucking outrageous'.  But I had to suppress a giggle (which in itself was probably inappropriate) when I heard that Cardinal O'Brien (Stonewall's 'bigot of the year) is standing down because of inappropriate behaviour towards young priests. 

Given the track record of the Catholic church - predatory sexual behaviour and the mis-use of positions of authority would seem entirely 'appropriate' with that particular organisation's ethos.

Everything becomes a commodity ?

I'm delighted to see that the  proposed sale of our local Banksy 'Slave Labour' mural has been stopped. 

I realise that in many circles the jury is out on Banksy's political credibility.  He straddles the mainstream and has now done pretty nicely  out of his public acts of subversion. 

But  at the moment that's quibbling - the mural in Wood Green was a much-needed  little bit of thoughtfulness and culture in what is otherwise a depressingly barren bit of North London.   The area's other  'attractions' are restricted to 'Shopping City'  - apparently one of the oldest shopping malls in the country - a couple of multiplex cinema chains and a brace of Witherspoons pubs. 

From whichever way you look at it, the mural - a child worker making union jack flags   sited outside a Poundland shop at the time of the queen's jubilee  - is a very apt reflection of our times. And we want it back where it belongs.

What are we eating ?

It looks like Nestle is the latest next big business to be in the shit over contaminated food ingredients.  I suspect there will be many more of these stories to come.

In my previous life - working on packaging reprographics - I gained a bit of an insight into the murky world of retail. I used to do work for one of the particular brands recently featured in the horse meat scandal. 

Whilst we worked for them, as part of a cost-cutting exercise they shifted much of their production to Eastern Europe. As a result we were asked to retouch the picture on the front of the box so as to remove a layer of meat from their lasagna. More generally in the fifteen years or so that I dealt with the retail sector there was, predictably,  a huge shift in the supply base - whether it was food or textiles - away from suppliers in this country or Western Europe. 

The big businesses involved sat above this whole  process like Pontius Pilate.

They issued ethical sourcing policies which suppliers were to sign up to, committing them to maintaining decent working conditions and rights for their workers, and to 'transparency in the supply chain' (telling the retailer what they were doing and how they were do it). Having then indemnified and insulated themselves from any sort of shit sticking. the retailers largely left the suppliers  to it. But at the same time the brief every time that a contract was up for renewal was  to pursue more savings. And this crusade was on a 'no questions' asked basis. It is no surprise then that in the pursuit of fulfilling this quest - child labour, sweat shops - and shit unverified ingredients -  are all simply just part of the process. The stories emerging  over what is in the  food we eat is not an isolated scandal - it is endemic to capitalism - and I'm sure there is more to come. I'm also sure that somehow the retailers will manage to come up smelling of roses.

Gove loses the historical plot

Amidst the euphoria over Grove's humiliating climb down over the Ebacc, the proposed new framework for the national curriculum has gone relatively unnoticed. 

I can't speak for other subjects but for History the changes can only be described as daft and dangerous.

Daft - because you only have to look at the curriculum for Key Stage 2 to see the crazy body of knowledge that Grove now seriously expects kids to have before they turn up at secondary school.

Dangerous because, whilst no primary  school is ever really going to cover all this, undoubtedly some will try. And they won't be primaries in the inner cities because like my lovely local primary school that I had to spend a week in as part of my secondary training - they are  quite rightly too busy teaching seriously disadvantaged kids the basics of literacy and numeracy.

The changes, by further increasing and institutionalising the gaps between childrens' experience before they start secondary school, will have the same regressive and divisive effect that Grove originally intended with the Ebacc.

And the history is pretty dubious too:

Here's the KS2 History framework in all its glory:

"Pupils should be taught the following chronology of British history sequentially:

Early Britons and settlers, including: 

the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages

Celtic culture and patterns of settlement

Roman conquest and rule, including:

Caesar, Augustus, and Claudius

Britain as part of the Roman Empire

the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire

Anglo-Saxon and Viking settlement, including:

the Heptarchy

the spread of Christianity

key developments in the reigns of Alfred, Athelstan, Cnut and Edward the Confessor 

The Norman Conquest and Norman rule, including: 

the Domesday Book

feudalism

Norman culture

the Crusades

Plantagenet rule in the 12th and 13th centuries, including:

key developments in the reign of Henry II
the murder of Thomas Becket 

Magna Carta

de Montfort's Parliament
Relations between England, Wales, Scotland and France, including: 

William Wallace

Robert the Bruce

Llywelyn and Dafydd ap Gruffydd

the Hundred Years War 

Life in 14th-century England, including: 

chivalry

the Black Death

the Peasants’ Revolt 

The later Middle Ages and the early modern period, including: 

Chaucer and the revival of learning

Wycliffe’s Bible

Caxton and the introduction of the printing press

the Wars of the Roses

Warwick the Kingmaker
The Tudor period, including 

religious strife and Reformation in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary 

Elizabeth I's reign and English expansion, including: 

colonisation of the New World

plantation of Ireland

conflict with Spain

the Renaissance in England, including the lives and works of individuals such as Shakespeare and Marlowe 

The Stuart period, including: 

the Union of the Crowns

King versus Parliament

Cromwell's commonwealth, the Levellers and the Diggers

the restoration of the monarchy

the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London

Samuel Pepys and the establishment of the Royal Navy

the Glorious Revolution, constitutional monarchy and the Union of the Parliaments."

Marriage overdue reform

I am listening to the radio this morning and fuming whilst a succession of otherwise intelligent and educated people tie themselves in knots trying to argue against gay marriage.

Although there is some comedy value in hearing a bunch of otherwise disturbingly repressed individuals - Ann Widecombe and a whole bunch of more-catholic-than-thou Anglican clergymen in particular - so obsessed with sex. 

Because their main argument is that gay marriages are not about procreation. Even if gay couples can adopt and provide a stable and loving environment for a child they can't - and you can almost hear these repressed homophobes choking on their own priggishness as they say it - have 'proper sex'. 

To quote Fawlty Towers - the psychiatrists would have a field day with that lot.

As a determinedly unmarried heterosexual (because as Shakespeare's Brutus says honest men don't need to take vows), I will be cheering on from the side lines when the House of Commons drags the marriage laws into the 21st Century. 

But mostly I will be reading Engels'  'Origins of Family, Private Property and the State' and reminding myself where all this nonsense comes from.

In defence of Gerald Scarfe

There are many many things that Rupert Murdoch should apologise for. But Gerald Scrafe's cartoon of Netanyahu with the caption 'will cementing the peace process continue ?' is not one of them. 

Murdoch distances himself from the cartoonist - 'grotesque and offensive' - so I can only wonder of he has actually seen any of Scarfe's work before. Because the offensive and the grotesque have been Scarfe's stock in trade for something over forty years - as they have been of great cartoonists since the days of Hogarth.

Accusations of antiemtism seem to hinge on two artistically spurious arguments;

That Netanyahu is pictured with a big nose. surely this can only be said by someone who has never seen Scarfe's work before. As Nissim “Nusko” Hezkiyahu - one of Israel's leading cartoonists puts it:

“If you look at the other caricatures, Bibi came off easy.” “To say that this caricature shows Bibi with a big nose — compared to all the caricatures that are published here, I think that was the smallest nose he ever had,”

Or - that the depiction of blood oozing out of the mortar in the wall symbolising the West Bank Barrier is a reference to the 'blood libel' of medieval antisemitism. Again anyone who has seen Scarfe's work know that splashing blood  red ink about on white paper is one of his  favoured shock techniques. Artistically then perhaps we can accuse Scarfe of a lack of originality.

But what we are really left with is a lazy political argument that condemnation of the policies of an Israeli government towards the Palestinian people is antisemitic. 

Which leaves the question of the timing of the cartoon's publication  on Holocaust Memorial Day - something that does show some insensitivity and misjudgement. However it was a decision which Scarfe himself had no part in. That particular decision lies with ... Murdoch and his management.