Edinburgh International Book Festival: Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Mark Haddon, Simon Armitage

Roy Hattersley, addressing the Book Festival on Thursday, assured a packed Main Theatre that the problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party had been dealt with.
Rabbi Julia Neuberger. Picture: Sutton HibbertRabbi Julia Neuberger. Picture: Sutton Hibbert
Rabbi Julia Neuberger. Picture: Sutton Hibbert

Yesterday, in the same place, Rabbi Julia Neuberger begged to differ. In a fascinating hour of conversation with Richard Holloway about her book, Antisemitism: What It Is, What It Isn’t and Why It Matters, she convinced us there is much work still to do.

Speaking from long experience as a rabbi, and in a variety of other public roles, she said she was shocked when she discovered – while researching her book – the vitriol to which female Jewish Labour MPs were exposed to on social media, much of it from within the party.

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Simon Armitage. Picture: Victoria JonesSimon Armitage. Picture: Victoria Jones
Simon Armitage. Picture: Victoria Jones
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She was critical of the party’s lengthy disciplinary procedure, arguing that more effective action could be taken.

“If the Labour Party really wants to show they are serious about dealing with it, they should stand up and do it, say that anybody who makes this kind of comment is out [of the party] right now. I can’t look into Corbyn’s heart and say he’s an anti-semite, but he is presiding over it.”

She described an Early Day Motion to rename Holocaust Memorial Day “Genocide Memorial Day”, tabled in 2011 on Holocaust Memorial Day by John McDonnell with the backing of other Labour MPs including Jeremy Corbyn, as “at best extremely insensitive, at worst, antisemitic.”

And she brought valuable insight to the business of disentangling antisemitism from criticism of the policies of the Israeli government. “Being critical of Israel in reasonable terms is not anti-semitic,” she said.

“But it is antisemitic to criticise Israel in extreme terms which you wouldn’t use for another country, and if you don’t criticise other countries for worse examples of the same thing.”

The next guest in the main theatre was novelist Mark Haddon, on fine form despite the fact that he is recovering from an emergency triple bypass operation.

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Exhibiting a writer’s fascination with all of life as potential material, he had to be discouraged from sharing too many of the gruesome details of the procedure.

And the same dispassionate clarity was clearly at work in the passage he read, the account of the tragic event which begins his new novel, The Porpoise. He described the book as “an over-caffeinated and rather disrespectful adaptation of Shakespeare’s Pericles”, which travels through time and space, myth and reality.

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Another writer who is unafraid to take his work into cosmic dimensions is Simon Armitage, the newly appointed poet laureate.

He has, he said, already written two poems as laureate, which is “more than William Wordsworth ever did”, including a poem of 53 words which has been engraved on the surface of a pill.

He delighted his audience by reading from his new book, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, a collection of the poems he has written for projects and commissions, which he descibes as “an apprenticeship for the laureate role”.

Tackling subjects as diverse as sculpture, wine-tasting and the development of catalytic fabric (by scientists in Sheffield), he seems more than qualified for his new post.

We hope he will bring all the qualities poetry has to offer to what is likely to be a challenging decade in British history.