Labour Lord John Cryer has disgracefully used parliamentary privilege to libel the Stop the War Coalition and we challenge him to make his allegations about us outside of the House of Lords.
His claim, made during a speech in the Lords, that as an organisation we have “strong links” to Hezbollah and Hamas is a lie, as is his supposition that we have links to Iran and the “clerical fascists of Tehran”.
There is a real effort, from different sections of the establishment and now this from a former left-Labour MP, who did not back a ceasefire in November 2023 when he was still in the House of Commons, to present pro-Palestine activists as Hamas supporters or antisemites.
He alleges we are an organisation which encourages anti-semitism, “whipping it up” and preying on “perhaps relatively young minds”.
The establishment are still trying to weaponise accusations of antisemitism against anyone who criticises Israel, but this has become much harder to pull off as support for Israel crumbles, even among its most ardent supporters on the Tory benches.
For the record, the Stop the War Coalition was founded in 2001 (not 2003 as Cryer asserts) in the weeks following 9/11, when George W. Bush announced the “war on terror”. We have since been dedicated to campaigning against the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere and for a free Palestine.
Also for the record, we continue to be called the Stop the War Coalition. Cryer’s theory about our name is bizarre.