Hugh Lanning

Hugh Lanning is a British pro-Palestinian activist and former trade-union official. He was the Deputy Chairman of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), one of Britain's largest trade unions, until May 2013. He has been the Chairman of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) since 2009, and in 2013 was named a vice chair of the group Unite Against Fascism (UAF).

Lanning has played a major role in persuading trade unions in Britain to declare solidarity with the Palestinians and to support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. During his tenure at PCS, Lanning was active in the effort to keep people he considered 'fascists' or 'racists' out of the union and out of union workplaces.

Lanning has given speeches at many labour and anti-racism rallies and has been a frequent contributor to the Morning Star, the daily newspaper of the British Communist Party.

Career

According to the PSC website, Lanning “has worked for the civil service trade union movement for over 30 years, starting with the Civil Service Union and all the subsequent merged unions.” As Deputy Chairman of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the UK's largest civil-service trade union, he served on the National Trade Union Committee, and was responsible for negotiations with the Cabinet Office on jobs, pensions, and personnel management issues.

Main article: Public and Commercial Services Union

2000

Lanning lost an election for General Secretary of PCS in 2000 to Mark Serwotka. His loss was widely described as unexpected.

2006

Lanning spoke at an April 2006 “rally against racism and fascism” in Trafalgar Square organized by a group called National Assembly against Racism.

At a “massive” Voices for Lebanon and Palestine rally in Trafalgar Square in July 2006, organized by PSC with the help of CND, Stop the War Coalition, British Muslim Initiative, Lebanese Muslim League, Lebanese Welfare Community and Friends of Al-Aqsa, Lanning spoke alongside actors Corin Redgrave, Kika Markham, Bill Paterson, and others, saying that “the British trade union movement has a good record on many international issues, but not on Palestine.”

2007

Lanning spoke at an evening event sponsored by Love Music Hate Racism and Unite Against Fascism at the Trades Union Congress in Brighton on 9 September 2007.

2008

At the PCS annual conference in May 2008, “an executive motion demanding justice for Palestine won overwhelming support,” reported the Morning Star. Lanning told conference attendees that while in Gaza “he had seen bloodstains where people had been shot and the burnt-out remains of shops and homes and he had met a terrified mother who spent three days in one room of her house as Israeli soldiers wrecked the rest of it while using it as a base.” Lanning said: “Wherever we went, asking our clever questions, the answer was always the same. 'It's the occupation, stupid.'” He added that “There is no free Palestine - it doesn't exist. The occupation is all there is and it is up to us to help a free Palestine become a reality.” He rejected arguments that Israel was at war. “Israel will not gain security without peace, certainly not by building walls, and there is only one way that Israel will have peace and that's with a free and independent Palestine.”

2009

In a 15 May 2009 article promoting a 16 May solidarity march organised by the PSC, British Muslim Initiative, CND, and the Palestinian Forum in Britain, Lanning charged that “Israel is preventing even the most essential medicines and food from entering Gaza.” He added that “Bethlehem is a ghost town - 90 per cent of its shops and hotels are closed. Why? It's the occupation, stupid.” He also described comparisons of Israel with apartheid South Africa as legitimate.

In July 2009, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints against an Israeli Ministry of Tourism “advert that suggested the West Bank and Gaza strip were part of Israel.” “At a time when Palestinian history, culture and memory are all under threat of extinction, this ruling by the ASA is welcome and significant,” Lanning said, adding that the ruling “demonstrates an awareness amongst a wider public, not just campaigners, that Palestine does exist and that it is struggling against an unjust and illegal occupation. This crude attempt by the Israeli tourist office to wipe Palestine off the map has rightfully failed.”

In a September 2009 article, Lanning celebrated the fact that UK trade union conferences had passed pro-Palestinian resolutions, and argued that it was now “time to raise solidarity with Palestinians onto a new and higher level.” He cited a motion by the Fire Brigades Union to forge “links with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions” and implement BDS measures. “This is our generation's responsibility,” he concluded. “If we do not act now, we will forsake the proud role trade unions in this country have played in supporting workers in need.”

Reacting to the fact that the BBC had invited a BNP leader to appear on the news interview program Question Time, Lanning told a hearing in October 2009 that “We don't want the BNP to work in the civil service, we want the civil service to be a fascist free area....We don't want them in our union, we don't want them in our workplaces....We have tens of thousands of black members and Muslims and Jews in our organisations and what signal are the BBC sending to them that spouting racist views is legitimate...?”

At Lanning's urging, British trade unions voted in 2009 by an overwhelming margin to commit themselves to the BDS (boycott, disinvestment and sanctions) movement. Lanning said that trade-union support for BDS had increased year by year. “Big players who’ve not had positions before, say like Unite, the largest union — but also little ones — are discussing the issue for the first time,” he said, but admitted that “what we haven’t yet done is translate” union support “into activism at the local level.” Lanning said the next step was to persuade global union federations, which have been traditionally pro-Israel, to join the BDS movement as well. Lanning expressed hope that something could be accomplished at the next meeting of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), in 2016.

In a 2009 letter entitled “Ban Israeli Goods: A PCS Campaign Toolkit,” written in his capacity as Deputy General of PCS and addressed to union members, Lanning reported that attendees at that year's PCS conference had cast an “overwhelming vote...to support the people of Palestine” and that the PCS was now “working closely with the TUC [Trade Union Confederation] and Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) to put together a campaign in which you, your colleagues, friends and family can all take part.” He explained that the focus of the campaign was to stop the sale in Britain of goods “grown on illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.” He urged union members to take part, saying that “mass action” was necessary “to put pressure on the supermarkets that sell the goods and demand that our politicians uphold international law by stopping the goods entering the UK in the first place.” Lanning did not mention in the letter that, in addition to his PCS position, he was also chairman of the PSC.

Lanning was named chairman of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) in 2009.

Main article: Palestine Solidarity Campaign

2010

Lanning told attendees of the Progressive London conference in February 2010 that the “seismic” change that had resulted in widespread trade-union support for the Palestinian cause must be expanded into a mass movement.

Lanning and several other activists signed a March 2010 letter to the Guardian announcing a Ban Settlement Goods campaign by the TUC and PSC.

Lanning went to Liverpool in May 2010 to address workers who were striking to protest changes in public-sector pensions.

In May 2010, at the annual Nabka rally outside 10 Downing Street, organized by PSC, Stop the War Campaign, CND, and the British Muslim Initiative, Lanning said: “We want to hold this new government to account on international law and we want the Lib Dems to fulfil the pledges they made to us before the election on fighting for the human rights of Palestinians.”

Lanning was one of several signatories of a June 2010 letter to the Guardian condemning Israeli's attack on “the Gaza flotilla taking urgently needed aid to the blockaded Palestinian people of Gaza.” The letter called for “an immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli government blockade off Gaza,” for suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement, and “for support for a policy of boycott of Israeli products, disinvestment from Israeli companies and sanctions against Israel until justice for the Palestinian people has been achieved.”

Lanning spoke alongside George Galloway and others at the Unite Against Racism, Fascism and Islamophobia Demonstration in London in November 2010.

Lanning, along with several other activists, signed a November 2010 letter to the Guardian urging Britism Telecom to sever its ties to the Israeli telecom firm Bezec International. In a December 2010 article for the Morning Star, Lanning reported that PSC had “joined with A Just Peace for Palestine, War on Want, and Jews for Justice for Palestinians to launch Disconnect Now,” a campaign to pressure BT to cut ties with Bezeq International.

2011

Lanning addressed anti-Government protesters in York in February 2011 as part of a local campaign against budget cuts.

During a U.S. visit in 2011, Lanning was the keynote speaker at the ninth annual convention of Al-Awda, an organization linked to terrorist groups. His speech was entitled “The Role of Trade Unions and Solidarity Campaigns in the Struggle for the Liberation of Palestine.” Prior to the conference, Howard Fuller, Secretary of the South West Thames branch of the PCS, posted a commentary online in which he asked questions about Lanning's attendance at the conference: “In what capacity is he attending? The Al-Awada statement refers to the fact the is Deputy General Secretary of PCS. Are you speaking in that capacity[?]...Also on what grounds would we need to send someone to this group[']s conference? Al-Awada is not a Trade Union nor is PCS affiliated to it....Is PCS paying for this trip? Are you going whilst on paid union time?” Fuller argued that the “incident shows the need for more openness on the part of the PCS and its leadership. All visits abroad and their reasons for being undertaken including who our representatives are meeting should be published in the public domain so we can see not only what our leaders are up to but how much they are spending on such trips. We shouldn’t have to find out from other sources what PCS officials are up to abroad.”

Hugh Lanning spoke at the annual rally outside 10 Downing Street in May 2011, telling the audience that “The Arab Spring brings us hope but also means real challenge to ensure UK government changes its policy. We must keep the pressure up until there is a free and independent Palestine.”

At a conference in June 2011, Lanning called for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

In an October 2011 article for the Morning Star, the daily newspaper of the British Communist Party, Lanning promoted the forthcoming Celebrate Diversity, Defence Multiculturalism conference, praised British diversity, deplored “the growth of Islamophobia,” and explained that PCS “sees its role to defend [the] anti-fascist tradition by teaming up with others in the trade union movement to voice the alternatives to the rise of the extreme right.” PCS was campaigning, he explained, “to have fascists banned from the Civil Service.”

On 15 October 2011, Lanning spoke at the One Society Many Cultures national convention, a “one-day national convention bringing together a broad alliance celebrating diversity, rejecting Islamophobia and fascism.”

An October 2011 article by Lanning in the Morning Star described the British media coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict as unbalanced. “Solidarity with Palestine,” Lanning wrote, “is born and bred on anti-racist principles, of distaste for a people being oppressed by virtue of their race, of the dishonour that is done to those who hold dear the values of their religions.”

In a 2011 blog post for the New Statesman, Robert Marchant, a political commentator and former Labour Party official, connected recent anti-Semitic incidents in Britain to a “small knot of campaigners” who “go by the name of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)” and who are receiving “succour” from “Britain's trade unions, once the reliable ballast of the Labour right,” but now “increasingly...influenced...by the far left.” Marchant called on the TUC to “wake up and challenge the toxic effect of its association with the PSC.” In a long response to Marchant, Lanning denied that PSC is racist, and insisted that it is, rather, fighting against a racist entity, namely Israel, which he accused of “ethnic cleansing” and “colonisation of Palestine.” He maintained that “there has been a concerted attempt to smear the PSC,” which he described as “a tactic that is born out of weakness. Because Israel is losing the political and moral argument. If Israel believed it was right in the eyes of the world, it would seek to justify the occupation, its siege on Gaza, the wall and the settlements. But it cannot do this. So it has to attack and discredit its opponents.”

2012

In a speech given on 18 January 2012, Lanning commemorated the victims of Operation Cast Lead, which he described as “23 days of onslaught, of slaughter that left 1400 people dead, hundreds injured, thousands displaced, schools, hospitals, whole infrastructure destroyed.” He rejected the argument that Israel was only acting in retaliation, saying “it is the most strange form of retaliation. It is like pre-emptive retaliation, isn’t it? You get your attack in first, you kill people first in greater numbers. That seems to be the sort of retaliation they are talking about.” He complained that: “Be it rocket attacks, prisoners, Hamas elections, whatever the Palestinians do, be it national government, be it any change, it doesn’t make any difference because the intent of what they are doing in Gaza is about the collective punishment of the Gazans and the Palestinian people.”

In a January 2012 op-ed, Lanning accused the Israeli Supreme Court of racism after it upheld a law denying Israeli citizenship spouses of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza Strip or from designated “enemy states.” Noting that this law was one of more than 30 Israeli laws identified by Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, as being discriminatory, he called on readers “to challenge this racism and support a framework of human rights, peace and justice,” and identified two firms, Ahava and Veolia, to be boycotted.

Lanning spoke at the Unite Against Fascism Conference on 28 February 2012.

“If history has taught us anything, it's never to turn our back on the threat posed by fascism,” Lanning told Labour Research in April 2012. “Trade unionists must never de-prioritise the anti-fascist struggle... There is never a time for trade unionists to be silent, or lower their voices on this issue.”

On 12 May 2012, Lanning addressed about 500 demonstrators who had gathered outside 10 Downing Street to commemorate the anniversary of the Nakba. Lanning, who said he had just returned from Palestine, said that “every day in Palestine is Nakba Day. The Palestinians are being encircled, imprisoned, colonised, driven off their land.” He accused Israel of “arresting people with no charge, no trial and no justice” and said that “If this was happening anywhere else on this planet it would be on the front page of every newspaper and on the daily news night after night. But it is being ignored because it is happening to the Palestinians.”

In June 2012, Lanning attended a conference in Gaza organised by Al-Awada, an organization that has been linked to terrorist groups. He and his PSC colleague Sarah Colborne were photographed at the conference chatting with Hamas operative Mohammed Sawalha and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Lanning was a speaker in September 2012 at a London event called “Love Music Hate Racism 10th Anniversary Event.”

Lanning addressed meetings held at the Labour Party conference in Manchester in October 2012 by PSC and Unite Against Fascism.

After the British government sought “to cut the amount of time civil servants can spend on union activity,” Lanning said in a letter to the Cabinet Office it was “unacceptable” that civil servants and their union representatives should be “left to learn of their employer's decision, which has personal implications for some of them, through national newspapers and statements at the Conservative party conference.” He described the policy shift as “a political attack on the democratic processes of trade unions” and warned that “this is going to fundamentally rupture industrial relations in the civil service....We will be asking Acas to intervene on this issue as well as challenging your decisions in the courts....The independence of the civil service from political pressure and interference in its role as an employer is a dangerous line to cross.'”

Lanning spoke at an anti-EDL event in Walthamstow in October 2012 that was organized by the groups We Are Waltham Forest and Unite Against Fascism and attended by more than 1,000 people. Lanning said: “The EDL wanted to come to Walthamstow to intimidate Muslim and other communities including trade unionists. They have been given a resounding no. Let's celebrate this victory together and united.”

2013

Lanning insisted in a 2013 speech that “Israel is ALWAYS the aggressor” and that Israel had banned 180 life saving medicines from Gazan hospitals “because they might save lives.” In the same speech he announced a PSC conference on 13 April that would involve “an open dialogue with the people of Gaza and their leaders” – in other words, Hamas.

In another 2013 speech, Lanning said that “our challenge...is to stop Israel’s racist war....And what have the Palestinians ever done to deserve the punishment they have endured and the treatment they have been subjected to? Have they invaded anyone? Have they imprisoned someone? Have they attacked someone?” Palestinians, he charged, “are discriminated against on the basis of their race and ethnicity.” He described the situation in Israel as one of “apartheid,” and described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as pitting “an illegal occupying power against the indigenous population.... It is the military Goliath to the Palestinian David.”

Lanning spoke at a March 2013 conference in London held by the Morning Star, the daily newspaper of the British Communist Party, “to discuss the crisis of political representation in parliament” and consider the possibility of forming a new working-class party.

The Morning Star reported on 14 April 2013 that Lanning had told a conference on the previous Saturday “that activists must urge the government to end Israel's ability to breach international law with 'impunity.” Lanning was quoted as saying that “The policy of governments including our own not to talk to the legitimate representatives of Palestinians is wrong and short sighted.”

He was a speaker at UAF's national conference in March 2013. It was reported in May 2013 that UAF, “believed to be a front group for the far-left extremist Socialist Workers Party,” planned “to counter demonstrate and disrupt rallies in memory of Lee Rigby, who was recently murdered in a savage attack in Woolwich.” Andrew Gilligan, in a June 2013 article in the Telegraph, noted Lanning's position with Unite Against Fascism, and recounted that UAF members had climbed on London's main war memorial, “squashing...flowers that mourners had placed there, then trying to remove half of them altogether and 'jeering' other visitors as they paid their respects.”

Lanning led a protest outside the British Parliament “against the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” The rally, which took place on 18 May 2013, commemorated “the 65th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.” Lanning told the protesters that the PSC had sent a letter to the Prime Minister saying that “It is our generation’s challenge to stop Israel getting away with what it is doing every single day.”

Lanning resigned from his position with the PCS in May 2013.

Lanning met with senior BBC executives in June 2013 to discuss BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Lanning felt was too Israel-friendly. The Israeli National News reported that the BBC had “come under fire” for having held “consultations” with Lanning, who was identified as “a senior member of...an anti-Israel group which openly supports Hamas, Hezbullah and other extremist organisations.”

In 2013, Lanning was elected a vice chair of Unite Against Fascism (UAF).

Main article: Unite Against Fascism

He was a speaker at UAF's national conference in March 2013. It was reported in May 2013 that UAF, “believed to be a front group for the far-left extremist Socialist Workers Party,” planned “to counter demonstrate and disrupt rallies in memory of Lee Rigby, who was recently murdered in a savage attack in Woolwich.” Andrew Gilligan, in a June 2013 article in the Telegraph, noted Lanning's position with Unite Against Fascism, and recounted that UAF members had climbed on London's main war memorial, “squashing...flowers that mourners had placed there, then trying to remove half of them altogether and 'jeering' other visitors as they paid their respects.”