Institutional anti-Semitism goes right to the top of the Labour Party
With so many spin doctors and fixers among Corbyn’s apparatchiks one would’ve thought they could have come up with a decent public relations response to this week’s Panorama expose of Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis. What might that have looked like?
“The Labour Party is an anti-racist Party with a long and proud history of standing up to prejudice. As such, we hold ourselves to the very highest standards and are taking the issues raised by Panorama very seriously indeed.”
The actual response from the Labour Party has been abhorrent. They have attempted to smear the BBC, the journalist behind the programme, and the whistle-blowers involved. It was a display so appalling that nobody can now credibly claim that anti-Semitism is taken seriously by the Labour leadership. This was clear from the pre-emptive response even before Panorama aired.
The well-respected reporter John Ware has faced unsubstantiated claims of bias from the Labour party and Corbyn supporters. In a complaint letter to BBC on 4th July, Labour asked the BBC “to suspend and reconsider the planned broadcast”. The complaint claimed the programme is biased against the party and contains “unsubstantiated allegations”. It deflects by calling on the BBC to expose Tory Islamophobia and accuses John Ware of anti-Corbyn agenda. Dismal stuff that one might expect from Donald Trump.
Momentum propagandists also put out a very sinister video smearing John Ware before they could have even seen his work. How telling. If this is how they act with Labour in opposition, what would they be like in power? If Corbyn’s Labour and his Momentum mob controlled the police, the security services and all the might of the state, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.
On social media, Corbyn trolls were out in force deflecting and smearing left, right and centre. Many of them unwittingly provided further evidence of the problem. Just about every tweet from a mainstream media outlet or well-known journalist regarding Labour anti-Semitism had a good smattering of anti-Semitic replies, including one asking how many senior managers of the BBC were Jewish.
On Wednesday evening, the programme finally aired. I won’t give a blow by blow account, instead I urge you to go and watch it. It’s upsetting and extremely disheartening. The whistle-blowers accuse senior Labour figures of interfering in the disciplinary process dealing with accusations of anti-Semitism. They said the leader’s office was “angry and obstructive” and “overruled” and “downgraded” disciplinary decisions.
Mike Creighton, Labour’s former head of the disputes team, suggested to Seamus Milne that the party should deal with top-level anti-Semitic cases “more swiftly and much more robustly”, and that Corbyn should make a speech, “saying that Israel had a right to exist”. Creighton claimed Milne’s laughed at the idea of this. Lovely.
The Labour staffers told a story of a Labour Party that had become a hostile environment for Jews and a safe space for anti-Semites. They faced regular abuse online and face to face from Labour members. “Hitler was right,” and “Hitler did not go far enough.” Izzy Lenga said she was called a “dirty Jew” and a “Zionist” every day.
The most extraordinary aspect of the programme was the ex-staffers account of the deterioration of their mental health. Kat Buckingham, the former head of disputes, described how she had a nervous breakdown in response to the constant abuse and the inaction of the party.
Her successor, Sam Matthews, said, “the mental health of me and my team went through the floor”, and described how he considered committing suicide by jumping off general secretary Jennie Formby’s office balcony because of the leadership’s attitude to dealing with anti-Semitism.
These young people who were committed to their party have suffered serious mental health issues because of their jobs, because of the racism they suffered and because their party failed them. How has the Labour leadership responded? They have attempted to blacken their names. The Labour party has conducted itself much like the Church of Scientology does when former members voice their concerns, they criticise them and say they are “disaffected”.
Anyone who watched Panorama this week and still feels that there is no anti-Semitism issue and the Labour Party’s response has been adequate has serious issues recognising racism. Anyone who still believes that these heartbroken ex-staffers who broke NDAs and faced the risk of legal threats are liars has issues with basic human empathy.
Labour have chosen their line to take, as typified by this tweet from the Labour Press Team’s Twitter account: “It is an authored polemic, with no political balance of interviewees, quotes invented and emails edited to change meaning. It is an overtly one-sided intervention in political controversy by the BBC”.
It’s about time that Labour recognised they have a real problem that they need to solve, rather than thinking that every media outlet is out to get them. Corbyn refused to be interviewed for the programme, as did a number of other prominent Corbyn supporters, so complaining about it being one-sided is a bit rich.
What the scandal exposes is that the Left has an issue on anti-Semitism because of its blinkered self-righteousness. They believe they can’t be racist because they are left-wing. Well, this week Panorama provided further compelling evidence that institutional anti-Semitism goes right to the top of the Labour Party. It drove staff to depression and suicidal thoughts. It’s spreading fear in the Jewish community. When will they face up to it?
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