Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the UK’s Labour Party in 2015 heralded a period of controversy, rancor, rebellion and resignations. The internal turmoil largely centered on a perceived growth of frank antisemitism within the ranks of the party, countenanced or down-played by the leadership. At the height of the storm, the party was made the subject of a legally-based inquiry into antisemitism within its organization, and was subsequently sued for libel based on its reaction to a BBC investigation into the allegations. These events undoubtedly played a part in the Labour party’s worst electoral defeat for eighty years in the general election of 2019, and Corbyn being replaced as leader.
Corbyn’s election as leader, an unpleasant surprise to most of his parliamentary colleagues, represented a well-orchestrated protest from the left-wing of the party at the social democratic policies that had marked the thirteen years of “New Labour” under Tony Blair. Ed Miliband, Blair’s marginally more left-wing successor, had done little as leader to assuage the thirst of the grass roots for more full-blooded socialist policies.
Corbyn was a known left-wing rebel who had often voted against his party in its “New Labour” guise. From the moment he became leader, hard-left views on a variety of topics became mainstream within the Labour party. Among them was “intersectionality,” the accepted left-wing term for perceiving a direct link between all victims of oppression, whether sexual, racial, political or economic, and for supporting all as a matter of course. Accepted left-wing doctrine deemed Palestinians to be oppressed and Israel to be the oppressor. As a result unequivocal support for the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel was de rigueur.
Some zealous supporters of Corbyn found it convenient to label their opposition to Israel anti-Zionism, making no distinction between opposing Israeli government policies and the very existence of the state. Some found it difficult to separate opposition to Israel from opposition to Jews generally – Israel was, after all, the Jewish state – and anti-Zionism morphed easily enough into plain antisemitism.
As cases of alleged antisemitic activity within the Labour party began to mount, so did public unease. Corbyn deemed it expedient to set up an internal inquiry. Its findings, announced in May 2016, were that the party was not “overrun by antisemitism or other forms of racism”, a conclusion that convinced few, particularly as the tide of antisemitic incidents and allegations within the party showed no signs of abating. Finally in May 2019 the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a body legally charged with promoting and enforcing the UK’s equality and non-discrimination laws, launched a formal investigation into whether Labour had “unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimized people because they are Jewish.”
In its report, published in October 2020, the EHRC determined that the Labour party had indeed been “responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination”. As a result, the party was legally obliged to draft an action plan, based on the EHRC recommendations, to remedy the unlawful aspects of its governance. The EHRC was required to monitor it and, if necessary, take action to enforce it. That is the current state of play.
The EHRC had no sooner issued its report than Corbyn issued his response. He asserted that the problem of antisemitism within Labour had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons” by opponents and the media. In short, he rejected the conclusions of the EHRC, implying they were politically motivated. That created a storm of media comment and resulted in his suspension from the party. One month later, though, Corbyn issued a conciliatory statement, and the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) lifted the suspension.
Labour’s newly-elected leader Keir Starmer, however, pledged as he was to extirpate antisemitism from the party root and branch, refused to readmit him to the parliamentary Labour party. So Corbyn is currently a free-floating Member of Parliament.
It is no surprise that the opinion that resulted in his suspension is held quite widely within the left-wing of the party, and continues to bubble to the surface from time to time. On July 20, 2021, Labour’s NEC, determined to demonstrate that it is taking effective action against antisemitism, banned four far-left factions known to support Corbyn. All were accused of asserting that claims of antisemitism in the Labour party were politically motivated, and of condoning inappropriate comments by party members. The ruling was that belonging to any of the four factions would be grounds for removal from the party.
Along with the ban, and in accordance with its EHRC obligations, Labour introduced a new process under which complaints will in future be handled by a panel of independent lawyers reporting to a new independent appeal board. In addition it announced that all prospective Labour party candidates will henceforth have to be trained by the Jewish Labour Movement about how to deal with antisemitism.
“We are acting decisively to put our house in order,” said Anneliese Dodds, Labour Party chair.
Keir Starmer’s determined action against Corbyn, allied to his center-left politics and his somewhat lackluster performance as leader, has alienated his hard left. On August 14 eminent British filmmaker, 85 year-old Ken Loach, announced on Twitter that he had been expelled from the Labour party by “Starmer and his clique”.
“Labour HQ finally decided I’m not fit to be a member of their party,” he wrote, “as I will not disown those already expelled. Well, I am proud to stand with the good friends and comrades victimized by the purge. There is indeed a witch-hunt.”
Left-wing activists, including Corbyn and other sitting MPs, rushed to Loach’s defense, describing him as Britain’s greatest living filmmaker whose films “exposed the inequalities in our society”. Loach has a long history of condemning artists who perform in Israel, charging them with supporting an “apartheid state”. He has allowed his own films to be shown in Israeli cinemas.
Also under investigation by Labour is Jenny Manson, the co-chair of Jewish Voice For Labour (JVL), a group which has consistently sought to downplay allegations of antisemitism under Corbyn, describing them as “exaggerated”. At the same time JVL is heavily involved in another incident arising from Labour’s Jewish problem.
On July 10, 2019 the BBC Panorama program investigated antisemitism in Corbyn’s Labour party. Seven former Labour staffers, responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct by party members, testified to a catalogue of efforts by party members and officials to subvert their work. The official Labour line, following the program, was to denounce them as “disaffected former staff” with “personal and political axes” to grind, and to accuse journalist John Ware, who made the program, of “deliberate and malicious representations designed to mislead the public.”
They sued the Labour party for libel. Losing its case in the High Court in July 2020, the party, authorized by Keir Starmer, issued an unreserved apology for making “false and defamatory” comments about Ware and the seven whistle-blowers, and agreed to pay substantial damages to them all.
But JVL had voiced its own denunciation of Ware on BBC radio the day after the Panorama program was transmitted. During the broadcast interview Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, JVL’s media officer, accused Ware of “a terrible record” of Islamophobia and far-right politics, claiming he had previously been disciplined and that the BBC had had to apologize. Ware sued JVL for libel. Following the preliminary hearing on August 18, 2021 the judge ruled that there was “no dispute” that the meaning of Wimborne-Idrissi’s words was defamatory. She ruled similarly in respect of a post by Wimborne-Idrissi on the JVL website. Unless a settlement is agreed, the case will now proceed to trial, where Wimborne-Idrissi will have to try to prove that what she said was true.
The storm whipped up during Corbyn’s time as Labour leader rumbles on. In its glory days during the mid-twentieth century, Labour used to boast that it was “a broad church,” successfully accommodating a wide range of political opinions. At the time this meant that it was able to include extreme left-wing elements within its ranks. The hard left has always been a minority within the Labour party, and British political history shows that whenever it gained a certain dominance, the result was electoral disaster. With the antisemitism debacle and its aftermath reducing any chance of winning power within the party to near zero, the hard left must be considering the possibility of a formal break from mainstream Labour. That would be a totally unforeseen, but not universally unwelcome, fallout from the whole unsavory antisemitism episode in the history of Britain’s Labour Party.