Leaked
labour party
anti-semitism
report
By Craig Murray
April 22, 2020
"Information
Clearing House"
-
I have now read my way
through all 851 pages of the suppressed and leaked
Labour Party report on
its handling of anti-semitism complaints. It is an
important document, that is fundamental to understanding
a major turning point in UK history, where Northern
European social democracy failed to re-establish itself
in the UK.
If whoever
leaked the document still has access to the vast amount
of original source material on which it is based, this
is documentation of immense historical value. I would
strongly urge them to send the original thousands of
emails, texts and messages to Wikileaks to ensure that
this is preserved for the public record.
More mundanely,
the report is of obvious value as evidence to the
Equality and Human Rights Commission as part of its
investigation into anti-semitism in the Labour Party.
The fact that it has not been officially adopted by the
Labour Party does not make any difference to its value
as evidence; nor does its status as regards copyright or
data protection law.
If, for
example, I were to discover evidence of blatant racism,
and send that to the EHRC, the EHRC would not refuse to
look at that evidence on the grounds it breached the
racists’ copyright or rights under the Data Protection
Act. These excuses for suppression of the report are
just that. I am accordingly myself sending a copy on to
the EHRC making just that point. I find it rather
troubling that Keir Starmer seems more interested in
suppressing this report than acting on its alarming
findings – and I say that as someone who is not
initially hostile to Starmer.
What are the
key points we learn from the report? Well, firstly that
there did exist among Labour Party members examples of
genuinely shocking and indisputable anti-semitism. It is
also true that in many cases the processes of dealing
with these individuals did drag on for months or even
years. Much of the report is concerned with precisely
whose fault that was within the Labour Party.
The report does
conclusively refute the accusation that delays were
occasioned by Jeremy Corbyn or his office, or that his
office displayed any sympathy for anti-semitism. In
fact, the opposite is the case. Corbyn’s office showed a
proper hatred of anti-semitism, but also an alarming
willingness to throw good people under the bus on very
flimsy allegations of anti-semitism. pp306-7 The report
shows a serious inability to distinguish between real,
nasty anti-semitism and opposition to the policies of
Israel.
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Furthermore,
this is the attitude of the authors of the report
themselves who in many scores of examples take for
granted that the accusations of anti-semitism are
sufficient to consider the case proven, and accept a
number of specified opinions as proof of anti-semitism
which are anything but.
The headlines
of course have been grabbed by the report’s stunning
exposure of the fact that Labour HQ was staffed by right
wingers so vehemently anti-Corbyn that they actively
wanted the Conservatives to win elections. I think it is
important to understand just how right wing they really
are. Senior members of staff were messaging each other
opposing any increase in corporation tax and opposing
re-nationalisation of the railways as “Trot” policies.
The case of the
horrible and very right wing John McTernan is
instructive. McTernan had taken to writing articles in
the Daily Telegraph praising the Tories and attacking
Labour, but the Governance and Legal Unit of Party HQ
refused to take action against him. They finally took
action when he wrote an article urging the Tories to
“crush the rail unions” for hampering the operations of
private railway companies; but the action taken was to
suspend a member who called McTernan out on his Tory
support. p.140
John
McTernan, meanwhile, formerly involved in New Labour
and a delegate to 2016 party conference, was
repeatedly reported from 25 July onwards for abusive
language on Twitter and elsewhere, including
describing Labour MPs who nominated Corbyn as
“morons”; tweeting twice that Corbyn was a
“traitor”; describing “Corbynistas” as racist;
telling an SNP MP that he should “Come down to
Peckham and try saying that, mate”; calling Corbyn a
“Putin-hugging, terrorist-loving, Trident-hater”;
and writing in the Daily Telegraph that all of
Corbyn’s supporters were “online trolls”.368
No action
was taken, and McTernan received the staff decision
“No action – removed at referral”. On 18 August,
however, Dan Hogan did report a member of McTernan’s
CLP, Omar Baggili, who – in response to an article
by McTernan in “The Telegraph” urging the
Conservative government to “crush the rail unions
once and for all” – tweeted at him “seriously John
why haven’t you got yourself a Tory membership card.
They’re anti unions & pro privatisation like
you.”369 Baggili was suspended for “abuse”.
This is by no
means an isolated example. One of my favourites is the
case of Andy Bigham (pp538-45), who initially came to
the attention of the Governance and Legal Unit for
suggesting Corbyn was a traitor and Diane Abbot should
be “locked in a box”. This was considered insufficient
for action to be taken against him, and incredibly this
stance was still maintained even when he subsequently
posted that he had voted Conservative, urged others to
vote Conservative and became the administrator of a
Conservative Party Facebook Group.
Meanwhile left
wingers were being thrown out of the party for having
advocated a Green vote years before they joined, or for
calling MPs who supported the Iraq war “warmonger”. The
report makes an overwhelming case that the Governance
and Legal Unit of the Labour Party failed to take action
on accusations of anti-semitism because it was devoting
all of its energies to a factional effort to remove
Corbyn supporters from the party.
These right
wing staff were hoping for Labour electoral defeats in
order to get rid of Corbyn. Senior Labour staff were
actually hoping Labour would lose its seat in the
Manchester Gorton by-election.
27/02/2017,
16:53 – Patrick Heneghan: Just had discussion at
strategy meeting We will meet Steve and Andy next
Monday – we are looking at all 3 in May but select
in Gorton within 4 weeks Katy will speak to you/Iain
27/02/2017, 16:53 – Patrick Heneghan: From karie
27/02/2017, 16:54 – Patrick Heneghan: They didn’t
include us in the discussion.
27/02/2017, 16:54 – Patrick Heneghan: Well let’s
hope the lib dems can do it….113
It has long
been known that there was tension between Corbyn and
Labour HQ staff over allocation of resources to key
marginals in the 2017 general election. What I had not
known prior to this report is that HQ staff set up
another organisation (p.92), based in another building,
to divert party funds and secretly channel them to the
campaigns of their favoured right wing MPs. On p.103 is
detailed the horror expressed by Labour Party HQ staff
at the Labour Party’s good performance in the 2017
election. People were “sickened” by the exit poll
showing the Tories losing their majority.
The emails and
messages quoted throughout the report are a tiny
percentage of those available and are, of course, the
selection of the authors of the report. That is why I
call on them to dump the whole cache, which they say is
many tens of thousands, to Wikileaks. One theme which
continually crops up in the selected passages for
quotation, but a theme on which the authors of the
report scarcely comment, is that support for British
military attacks abroad appeared to be the touchstone
issue for who was “in” and who was “out” with Labour
Party HQ staff.
The Manchester
terror attack occurred in the middle of the 2017 General
Election campaign. Corbyn bravely, and correctly, stated
something that had been unsayable in mainstream UK
political discourse – that British invasions abroad
provoke terrorism at home. Labour Party HQ staff hoped
and believed this would sink Corbyn and were actively
wishing Labour to fall in the polls. pp 96-7
Jo Greening
09:12: and I shall tell you why it is a peak and the
polling was done after the Manchester attack so with
a bit of luck this speech will show a clear polling
decline and we shall all be able to point to how
disgusting they truly are
(now obviously we know it was never real – but that
isnt the point in politics!)
Francis Grove-White 09:13: Yeah I’m sure that’s
right
Francis Grove-White 09:16: My fears are that: a) the
speech won’t go down as badly as it deserves to
thanks to the large groundswell of ill-informed
opposition to all western interventions. And b) they
will use that poll to claim they were on course to
win and then Manchester happened. And whether or not
JC goes, lots of the membership will buy that
argument. Like after the referendum when they
distorted the polling and claimed we had overtaken
the Tories before the “coup” happpened
Jo Greening 09:17: if this speech gets cut through –
as I think it may – it will harden normal people
against us definitely in the face of a
terror attack normal people do not blame foreign
intervention they blame immigration whats
more – all they will hear is we dont want to respond
strongly we want peace with ISIS it all plays into a
bigger picture of how they see corbyn so I have a
feeling this will cut through you are right on the
second point it has to be up to the MPs though to
demonstrate how toxic he is on the doorstep
throughout but that this speech particularly was
toxic and Manchester had happened when that poll was
in the field on the supporters I personally think we
are going to do very badly in deed and I think it
will shock a lot of them how badly we do including
JC so everyone has to be ready when he is in shock
it has to be clean and brutal and not involve the
party at all in my opinion those crazy people who
now make up our membership never want us to win in
anycase they are communists and green supporters
even if Manchester hadnt happened and we got smashed
they would have never changed their minds
Francis Grove-White 09:23: Yeah that’s true
My emphasis
added to show just how right wing thinking is at Labour
Party HQ.
To return to
the failure to deal with cases of anti-semitism, a great
deal of the problem appears to have arisen from sheer
incompetence of staff. The Labour HQ staff had been
inherited from the Blair years, and factional loyalty
and a history of right wing political activity related
to the Progress agenda were much more important in
employment decisions than qualifications or competence.
The Governance and Legal Unit, which handled the
complaints of anti-semitism, was staffed by vehemently
anti-Corbyn right wingers and was a bad actor; but it
was also just useless.
The most basic
systems were not in place, like a log of
complaints/allegations – there was no log at all, let
alone by category – and there was therefore no system
for tracking the progress of individual cases. Emails
went unanswered or even unread for many months,
sometimes in email boxes which nobody attended. The
epicentre of this incompetence was Sam Matthews, who was
to be the star of the BBC’s Panorama programme “Is
Labour Anti-Semitic” and the primary source of the
allegations that Corbyn’s office was preventing action
and protecting anti-semites.
It is
impossible to read this report – and I have ploughed
through all 851 pages – without coming to the conclusion
that Matthews himself was responsible for a great deal
of inertia. The report hints throughout that the failure
to deal with anti-semitic Labour Party members was a
deliberate act by party HQ staff in order to make Corbyn
look bad. This evidence does not make that case
conclusively, though it certainly does nothing to
undermine it. The report expresses the suspicion most
clearly in a passage on a period where Sam Matthews
started inundating Corbyn’s office with requests for
input on anti-semitism cases only later to produce the
replies to him as evidence of unhelpful interference.
This is a key passage of the Report (LOTO = Corbyn’s
office):
However,
Matthews’ emails reveal that he was the person who
initiated a process of asking LOTO for their views
on cases, on the basis that he was asking for their
“help”, explicitly saying “it’s really helpful to
have your input”. Matthews has also asserted:
“I had been
privy to emails where Jeremy Corbyn’s Chief of
Staff, Karie Murphy, was responding on a case by
case basis on antisemitism in order to not suspend
someone who they all knew damn well should be
suspended.
I thought I
just can’t countenance this.”1290
Matthews’
assertions about Murphy are also untrue. Murphy
responded to GLU-GSO on just one case, Craig
Allaker, agreeing with Emilie Oldknow’s suggestion
of a membership rejection. Murphy’s other emails
indicate that she did not want GLU involving LOTO in
disciplinary cases and she questioned why Matthews
had suddenly started involving them.
The
conclusion of the Labour Party is that Matthews and
possibly others in GLU-GSO instigated this process
of consultation with LOTO, and proposed suspensions
in some cases for conduct which GLU had previously
not considered to merit any form of disciplinary
action. This was later used by the same staff to
accuse LOTO of involvement in antisemitism cases or
of letting off antisemites, blaming LOTO and Jeremy
Corbyn for GLU’s inaction on antisemitism
complaints.. It may have been GLU and GSO’s
intention to make this accusation when they
initiated this process of consulting LOTO.
The report
proves conclusively that Matthews’ allegations of
unwarranted interference from Corbyn’s office to block
anti-semitism action are malicious lies. It does not
however conclusively show that his motive for asking for
input from Corbyn’s office was to generate material to
appear to substantiate his lies, not does it show
conclusively that his incompetence and that of the
Governance and Legal Unit in general was a deliberate
ploy to make Corbyn look bad. These are not, however,
unreasonable inferences.
What this
report proves beyond any doubt is that the entire thrust
of John Ware’s infamous Panorama episode, Is
Labour Anti-Semitic, was simply wrong. Corbyn’s
office was not responsible for lack of action over
anti-semitism. The people responsible were the very
people whom Ware chummed up with to make the
allegations.
All involved
were bad actors, including John Ware. He made no attempt
to fairly assess or present the facts, or to hear the
counter-arguments of those close to Jeremy Corbyn, and
appears at the very best to have accepted an extremely
selective presentation of written material from Matthews
without proper question. But it is of course worse than
that.
John Ware, a
freelance journalist, was hired by the BBC to make that
documentary despite a long history of anti-Muslim, and
specifically anti-Palestinian, propaganda that had
previously brought the BBC into disrepute and cost the
license fee payer money.
In 2006 a
John Ware produced Panorama programme Faith, Hate
and Charity made deeply damaging false accusations
about involvement with terrorism by Palestinian relief
charity Interpal and caused the BBC to have to
pay substantial damages
to the director of another charity, Islamic Relief. Both
Interpal and Islamic Relief have continually
been
targeted by the Israeli
government.
John Ware
has frequently been labeled an Islamophobe, including
repeatedly by the
Muslim Council of Britain.
There is a double standard at play here. I suggest to
you that it is simply the case that the BBC would never
commission somebody denounced as “anti-semitic” by the
Board of Deputies, more than once, to film a Panorama.
John Ware
is proud of his activism for zionism. In 2016 Ware had a
paid propaganda tour of
Israel as part of a “Commitment Award” from the World
Women’s International Zionist Organisation. Ware is
perfectly entitled to
write articles for the
Jewish Chronicle attacking the BDS movement, and he is
entitled to his views. But in the BBC Panorama
Is Labour anti-Semitic? programme, Ware posed
not as a strong pro-Israel propagandist, but as an
independent journalist conducting unbiased
investigation. In so doing, he allowed Sam Matthews and
numerous other Labour staff members to put forward lie
after lie after lie, which Ware appeared to validate, as
is conclusively proven by this 851 page report.
I am not
in a position to know whether John Ware knowingly
connived in the lies, or whether he was so blinded by
his deeply felt zionist ideology that he allowed himself
to be taken in. I do know that today John Ware is
engaged in fronting an attempt to takeover the Jewish
Chronicle and Jewish News, which has
drawn criticism from
within the Jewish community because the source of its
finance is secret. It was plainly wrong for the BBC to
hire somebody with the obvious axe to grind of John Ware
to make a Panorama documentary on this subject.
Like the
rest of the mainstream media, and like Keir Starmer, the
BBC has taken the excuse of this Labour report
“breaching the data protection act” to avoid reporting
the contradiction of the lies the BBC spewed out for
years. You wont find Nick Robinson, Laura Keunssberg or
Andrew Neil tweeting enthusiastically about this story.
Never have journalists been so united in refusing hard
news information because of the dubious legal basis –
though unquestioned first rate source and access – of
the leak. The Guardian for four years ran up to twenty
“Corbyn anti-semitism” stories and columns a week. Their
only action on this report has been to denigrate it by
reporting gleefully
that the Labour Party may be sued for large sums under
the Data Protection Act.
To turn to the
report itself, it contains so many examples of Corbyn’s
office pressing the Governance and Legal Unit to shove
alleged anti-semites out of the party quickly, that I am
not going to detail them here, but it includes all the
high profile cases including Ken Livingstone, Tony
Greenstein, Jackie Walker etc. It is plain from reading
the report that the Governance and Legal Unit were both
lackadaisical and incompetent – complaints against
anti-semitism were a minority of complaints they
received, and complaints of sexual harrassment were
receiving even less action (p.264). But sporadically the
party machinery appears more concerned to give a fair
hearing than Corbyn’s office, who would just shoot
anyone the Guardian requested.
There are
horrific examples of anti-semitism within the report,
but also instances where I would query the
categorisation as anti-semitism not only of Labour HQ at
the time, but of this report.
At p.214
a case is given of somebody deemed an anti-semite for
quoting the Rothschild involvement in Genie Energy
fracking in the Golan Heights. Now I claim to be the
person who
first broke this story
to a wider audience, (after finding it in the trade
press), and it is completely true. Here is Genie
Energy’s
own press release.
Mineral
exploitation of the occupied Syrian Global Heights by
the occupying power is illegal in international law.
Shale gas drilling is highly problematic
environmentally. It is Genie Energy’s own company press
release which led with the involvement of Jacob
Rothschild (and Rupert Murdoch).
Claude
Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented,
“Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on
access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry
and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and
Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and
connected to leaders in these sectors. Their
guidance and participation will prove invaluable.”
“I am
grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity
to invest in this important initiative,” Lord
Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary
achievements speak for themselves and we are very
pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie
Energy is making good technological progress to tap
the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which
could transform the future prospects of Israel, the
Middle East and our allies around the world.”
I perfectly
accept that there is a fundamental strain of
anti-semitism that accuses the Rothschilds and other
“Jewish bankers” of controlling world capitalism, and
that this is dangerous and harmful nonsense beloved of
the Nazis. The Labour report actually gives some
examples of precisely that. But you cannot move from
there to the position that any criticism of any specific
action of the Rothschild family is therefore
anti-semitism. To criticise their involvement in
illegally fracking on the occupied Golan Heights is
perfectly legitimate journalism. It is not an
anti-semitic trope.
Similarly it is
cited repeatedly (eg p.461) as “anti-semitism” to claim
Israeli involvement with ISIS. Why is that? Nobody
seriously disputes that the most important diplomatic
change in the Middle East of the last decade has been
the de facto alliance of Israel and Saudi Arabia
(together with most of the GCC), aimed squarely at Iran.
Nobody seriously disputes that ISIS, Daesh and Al Nusra
have all been enabled at a fundamental level by Saudi
and GCC funding and supplies. Some, but very few,
analysts genuinely deny western assistance to those
jihadi factions when operating against Syria. Nobody
disputes the hostility between Isis/Daesh/Al Nusra and
not only Hezbollah but also Hamas.
ISIS/Daesh/Al
Nusra are the allies of Israel’s allies and the enemies
of Israel’s enemies. It is not in the least irrational,
nor anti-semitic, to posit possible cooperation.
Personally I doubt there has been much – the Israelis
are not as foolhardy as the Americans. The odd
supportive air strike at Saudi urging, or targeted aid,
or intelligence feed perhaps. There may be more. But the
idea that it is anti-semitic to suggest Israeli aid to
ISIS is wrong, and brings inyo play the question of the
use of accusations of anti-semitism to chill legitimate
analysis and criticism of Israel.
On Ken
Livingstone, I do not think in the least that Ken is an
anti-semite. I do however think he is wrong. I have
always found the discourse around Nazi/Zionist links
disturbing and generally anti-semitic in motivation. Of
course there may have been contact at some early stage
between Nazis who wished to eradicate Jews from Europe,
and Zionists who wished Jews to move to Israel. But what
purpose is there in pointing that out? The Jew-hatred of
the Nazis is indisputable, and any misguided Zionist who
tried to deal with them was not therefore a Nazi
supporter. It is a pointless discussion with highly
unpleasant undertones. How Ken was entrapped into it I
struggle to understand.
The report is
desperate to be seen as approving Labour’s now toughness
on anti-semitism, and therefore endorses the
characterisation of people as anti-semites whom I know
not to be. Several instances are given of quoting or
linking to Gilad Atzmon as evidence of anti-semitism,
seemingly with no need felt to analyse the particular
Atzmon article being quoted. Atzmon is of course an
Israeli Jew of controversial views particularly on
Jewish identity, but it ought not to be axiomatic that
to refer to Atzmon is anti-semitic.
Some of
this is troubling. We are all more aware nowadays of
historic involvement in the slave trade. The BBC
recently did some
excellent programmes on
Scotland and the slave trade. Yet the report contains an
analysis by the Community Security Trust p.363 that
states that to discuss Jewish involvement in the slave
trade (in the instance in question, it was a Jewish
person discussing) is an anti-semitic trope. The dangers
of this approach are obvious. I have not studied it, and
I doubt that Jewish involvement in the slave trade was
as bad as Scottish. But I do not doubt it existed, and
it ought to be equally as open as Scottish involvement
to investigation and comment. You cannot dismiss just
everything that may show any group of Jewish people in a
bad light as “an anti-semitic trope”.
In short, in my
view the report correctly identifies the existence of
genuine antisemitism from a small minority of Labour
Party members. It correctly identifies that the Labour
Party machinery was highly incompetent in dealing with
the vast majority of complaints of anti-semitism. It
identifies that almost all input from Corbyn’s office
was demanding tougher and firmer action. But it makes
the error, in its desire to clear the Labour Party of
any taint of anti-semitism, of enthusiastically
endorsing definitions of anti-semitic behaviour which
are so wide as to chill legitimate free speech.
So what
conclusions can we form? Well, the first is that Corbyn
failed to be sufficiently ruthless in clearing out the
quite extraordinarily right wing Blairites that he had
inherited as Labour Party HQ staff. The Labour Party is
a horribly complex institution, with elected committees,
and powerful unions to appease who control the purse
strings. But Blair and Brown had managed to create a
machine in their own right wing image, and it is hard to
read this report without concluding that Corbyn lacked
the ruthlessness required in a leader to spot enemies
and be rid of them.
But then, his
not being a ruthless bastard is why so many people
flocked to support Corbyn in the first place.
The second
point is that Corbyn’s tactic of constantly attempting
to appease the media on anti-semitism was never going to
work. The right wing press and TV had no genuine
interest in anti-racism, other than as a tool to prevent
the possible election of a European style social
democratic government. Neither the media nor the
Blairites were ever going to reconcile to Corbyn. We
will never know what would have happened if he had come
out and denounced the witch-hunt as an attempt to stifle
supporters of the Palestinians, and spoken openly of
Israel’s move to apartheid. He had the nerve to take on
the establishment narrative when he stated that British
military invasions cause terrorist blowback at home, and
won public support. Whether a firm line on Palestine and
calling out the witch-hunt would have had a better
result than giving way before ten thousand unfair
attacks, we can never know.
There are more
general points therefore to consider about the nature of
power and of political parties. I intend to address
these in a further article – including some very
worrying similarities with the staff and orientation of
SNP HQ.
Craig
Murray, Historian, Former Ambassador, Human Rights
Activist - "Source"
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