An important report by Alex Chalmers on antisemitic anti-Zionism and the scandal of Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) has just appeared at Fathom. An excerpt:
In a way, the antisemitic incidents I witnessed in OULC are less troubling than the culture which allowed such behaviour to become normalised. It is common to encounter antisemitic individuals in all walks of life, but the mass turning of a blind eye that has come to characterise vast parts of the Left is chilling. As antisemites can double up as vocal critics of Israel, there is a marked tendency on the Left to view them as fellow travellers whose hearts are in the right place – so their rhetoric passes the test of social acceptability.
One of the major British political anomalies vis-à-vis Europe is the lack of a Christian Democratic political party. In most European countries these parties are part of the political fabric of the nation, but in Britain Christian Democracy never developed into a party. Research has shown that during the twentieth century there were British groups that inspired by Catholic social thought were the closest approximation to Christian Democracy. They not only sought to influence the parties, but also introduced into domestic politics typical Christian Democratic concerns. Thus, this essay seeks to address the following questions: What were their aims and policies? How and in what ways did they influence the parties? What was their ideological outlook? Finally, were there ideological differences among these groups? 
