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. 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.
With grateful thanks to those who donated or subscribed to make this reporting possible.
This article is entirely free to reproduce and publish, including in translation, and I very much hope people will do so actively. Truth shall set us free.
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“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?”
This is an absurd judgement, which smacks of a hatred of historical enquiry. Accurate knowledge of what happened is something all people should be concerned to see. Yet you, not only acknowledge you do not know this history, but effectively claim it is illegitimate for others to know and speak. In taking this position you are not only adopting the position of history denier, but also of denier of the fundamental human right to freedom of expression, which includes the right to access opinions.
But what purpose is there in pointing that out?
It is important because some Zionists definitely have a close association with and defend fascist Ideology, or are to be found on the far right side of Jewish conservatism and orthodoxy.
Why is it important to point out antisemitic stream in labour but deny or try to hide that fascist ideas have found a foothold in Israel itself, thereby maintaining the illusion that fascism is necessarily in any way connected to antisemitism? The fascism of Mussolini had quite a few Jewish supporters.
11 January 2009
When One People’s “National Liberation Movement” Is Another People’s Genocide
https://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2009/01/poor-misunderstood-israel.html
Where can one find a copy of the report?
As usual here https://off-guardian.org/wp-content/medialibrary/200329-Labour-Report-Final.pdf?x24195 at off G.
https://filebin.net/4pfcr1us6yugp6z9/200329-Labour-Report-Final.pdf?t=jo8s4kom
Labour Party – The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 – 2019 (Cryptome)
According to Mark Lewis of law firm Patron Law, who is representing 20 of those named in the report, it is a breach of Data Protection Act to circulate or even to read the said leaked report under discussion. Craig has sent a copy to the EHRC! Any comment? I am baffled.
Steve+Hayes, please (re)consider the last words: “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”
While I applaud your passionate stance here: “Accurate knowledge of what happened is something all people should be concerned to see” – you do seem to be missing the more important point. The passion then seems grossly ill-targeted to me, sadly.
People working in a political context to exercise power for the greater good need to be VERY careful to choose their battles and watch their words. Livingstone knows this very well indeed. Every word spoken WILL be twisted, misinterpreted and weaponised against the speaker. This is par for the course. It should be written somewhere in the job-description.
Livingstone handed a gun to his enemies, placed the muzzle against his own head and then reached up to pull the trigger. It was an act of political suicide. Maybe he chose to martyr himself rather than fight a losing battle with the PLP hierarchy now exposed in the report… I hope that one day he will tell us.
You confuse strategy with tactics; it’s always the wrong time to tell the emperor that his arse is hanging out. The difference between a liberal and a Tory is that the Tory says “no, never” and the liberal says “yes but not yet”. The ignoble history of the Corbyn leadership is littered with examples of your sophistry. If decent people take your advice they will end up waiting until the Greek Kalends – like Liarbour supporters.
Livingstone was right to speak, right in his descriptions of facts and wrong only in saying 1932 instead of 1933. Decent people will be revolted at his treatment and the cowardice of the “left” in allowing fake Jews and all too real zionist antisemites to be used as Brownshirt enforcers by American Caesar and his British lickspittles.
“How Ken was entrapped into it I struggle to understand.”
In my recolection he mentioned it in passing and then shut up about it. Everybody else kept talking.
Full details of Haavara Agreement (which Ken Livingstone was refering to) can be found at Yf’aat Weiss, The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement: A Jewish Dilemma on the Eve of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem Shoah Resource Center.
Or on Wikkipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement.
The books: ‘1938 Hitler’s Gamble’ and ‘The Order of the Death’s Head, The Story of Hitler’s SS’ are both excellent histories of the Nazi’s relationship with Europe’s Jewish population and indeed much more.
Things were not altogether as we believe them to have been and until the Final Solution was taken, the relationship was in an almost constant state of flux, what remained constant was the desire to steal the personal wealth and assets of the Jews and banish them from Germany..
what remained constant was the desire to steal the personal wealth and assets of the Jews and banish them from Germany.
Actually the root cause of the hatred of jews leveraged by the Nazis was the way certain jews had exploited the financial chaos and misery to enrich themselves that the vast majority of the German population endured in the 1920s as a result of the post war reparations. Hitler extrapolated this to encompass all jews and that laid the blame for the impoverishment of the people on jews in general. Much of the personal wealth and assets you talk about were gained at the expense of ordinary Germans. You always need to look at the big picture.
“the way certain jews had exploited the financial chaos and misery to enrich themselves ”
No gentiles did this?
Try re-reading the snippet you quote without skipping over the word “certain”.
If that doesn’t work, try adding the words “amongst others”, which are implied, but not stated, between “jews” and “had”.
“Actually the root cause of the hatred of jews leveraged by the Nazis was the way certain jews had exploited the financial chaos and misery to enrich themselves… Much of the personal wealth and assets you talk about were gained at the expense of ordinary Germans”
You have got to be kidding me.
I know the comments on Craig’s articles can sometimes wander into some pretty odd conspiritorial places, but I can’t believe this hasn’t been challenged. Having read some of the report myself I broadly agree with the summary in the article, but this is just offensive.
In what way am I kidding you? Hitler scapegoated all jews for the misery the German people suffered in the inter war period. However, certain jews did take advantage of the situation to enrich themselves and effectively laid themselves open to the charges Hitler made against them. That is a historic fact, nothing to do with any so-called anti-semitism, if you are trying to lay that allegation at my feet.
I have no desire to either cause offence, or engage in conspiracy theories, I was replyjng to Yr Gen Hof who first raised the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger#Antisemitism
No it wasn’t, racist antisemitism came much earlier, in France and Austria-Hungary more than in Germany – remember Karl Lueger?
Discriminating against a few “Jewish”* capitalists is a cheap way of evading acknowledgement of the inherent evil of capitalism.
* I defy anyone to reconcile sky-god religions to the systematic exploitation of people.
Oh and anti-Jewish bigotry was a minority fetish in post-1918 Germany. Attempts to incite the public were conspicuous failures even in the 1930s.
Oh and Oh again, Germany paid hardly any reparations, most came from US loans under the Dawes and Young plans.
Much of the libel against the Jews is because they were historically denied employment except in particular areas. Hence all the stuff about Jews in the Arts, because it was pretty much their only other option than banking/jewellery. The latter two of course originally because Christian Europe banned Usury, charging interest on loans. Whereas Jewish law doesn’t. So the Jews in Medieval Europe ended up being bankers. In various cases of rulers expelling the Jews it was because those rulers found themselves too much in hock to them and did not wish to pay.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=lenni+brenner&i=stripbooks&crid=3RCDJTQRRW9R4&sprefix=lenni+brenner%2Caps%2C443&ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_13
All liberals quail before evidence of the unspeakable moral corruption of zionism and would rather pretend that “the past is the past”, “no-one saw it coming”, “unprecedented” etc, etc, blah….
The “Proposal of the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the side of Germany” was found post-war in Germany’s Turkish embassy. The Sternists declared that
“The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East. (passage from Lenni Brenner)
This isn’t ignorant, misguided or foolhardy, it is dirty.
” 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”
This is a strain that is noticeable in all liberal to left or left leaning political parties in basically all NATO or EU affiliated countries,
from Canada to Germany, from Italy to Denmark.
There is a general unwillingness to permit to discuss the behaviour of the Government of Israel or their agencies including the military towards the Palestinians and any critique of their dealings with the Arabs in Israel itself or human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories are labelled as anti Semitic as long as they are not issued by the Governments or their agencies of those countries.
Especially the political right of any of those parliaments who are more aligned with the right fraction that controls Israel uses this as a hammer against the left who is more critical towards Israeli actions towards Palestinians.
The critic of the political Zionism and of the Jewish Religion and its quite nasty racism displayed in some passages itself gets easily and willingly conflated with the anti antisemitism that is directed at the ethnicity of the persons.
The most blatant representative who was given voice was Henrik M. Broder, infamous of the SPIEGEL magazine. “Broder is especially interested in Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Islam, Israel, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He sees a close relationship between German criticism of Israel’s policies and Antisemitism, a view criticized by, among others, the French-German columnist Alfred Grosser.[1]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_M._Broder
The Labour Party has never been what it was founded to be. It was infiltrated at its birth by tories put in it to destroy it and cause disharmony and they have suceeded this anti semitism is an example any decent person condems murder and theft and Israel have been and still are doing it now that’s an undisputable fact not malice or lies Momentom should break away and form a Real Labour Party and leave the so called remaining labour who complain about real socolium and lets see how many votes those who remain get ??? I would say to thes traitors your numbers up I mean puting a SIR I charge of the people’s party says it all they treat the working class as a joke
It was Momentum, owned by Jon Lansman, which agreed to the ten demands of the Board of Deputies and the IHRA definition of anti semitism. Momentum is not the solution but part of the problem. It will continue to be so until it becomes democratic and ceases to be the mouthpiece of one man and his zionism.
Pledges, not demands. Big difference.
Of course they were phrased as pledges. Of course they were actually demands (or else your leadership campaign will be subject to accusations of acquiescing to anti-semitism by the BoD).
Quite – all 3 leadership candidates pledged to implement the 10 demands.
Only JLM can be recognised.
JVL members must be purged.
Thanks so much for that analysis – very valuable.
You ask about Ken Livingstone’s motivation to draw the link between Zionists and Nazis during the 1930s. It is a good question, and I share you view tha it was a stupid thing to do. The best explanation I came across was that of Norman Finklestein in 2016 in an interview on Open Democracy
(https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/american-jewish-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scanda/)
Interviewer: “Even if there was a factual basis for Livingstone’s remarks, to bring the issue up at that moment – wasn’t he just baiting Jews?”
Finklestein: “I can understand his motivation, because I’m of roughly his generation. If he was ‘baiting’, it was a reflexive throwback to the factional polemics in the 1970s-80s. Israel marketed Zionists as the only Jews who had resisted the Nazis. The propaganda image projected back then was, the only resistance to the Nazis came from the Zionists, and the natural corollary was, the only force protecting Jews now is Israel. Every other Jew was either a coward, ‘going like sheep to slaughter’, or a collaborator. Those who dissented from Israeli policy back then, in order to undercut this Zionist propaganda, and to strike a nerve with them, would recall this unsavoury chapter in Zionism’s history. Some pamphlets and books appeared – such as Lenni Brenner’s Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983) – to document this ‘perfidious Zionist-Nazi collaboration’. Livingstone’s recent comments were born of the same reflex that motivated us back then. These certifiable creeps who went after Naz Shah got under his skin, and so he wanted to get under their skin. That’s how we used to fight this political battle: by dredging up those sordid chapters in Zionist history.
Livingstone based himself on Brenner’s book. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that perhaps Brenner’s book contains factual errors, it’s more of a party pamphlet than a scholarly tome, and it’s not exactly weighed down with copious documentation. Still, the fact of the matter is, when Brenner’s book was published, it garnered positive reviews in the respectable British press. The Times, which is today leading the charge against Livingstone and the elected Labour leadership, back then published a review praising Brenner’s book as ‘crisp and carefully documented’. The reviewer, the eminent editorialist Edward Mortimer, observed that ‘Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler’s’. So, it’s a tribute to Ken Livingstone that at age 70 he remembered a book he read more than 30 years ago, that got a good review in the Times when it first appeared. If the Times is upset at Livingstone’s remarks, it has only itself to blame. I myself only read Brenner’s book after the Times review.”
Ken did NOT bring the issue up. Vanessa Feltz brought up Hitler, and at a loss for why she did so in relation to the Labour Party, he then, in passing, alluded to The Haavara Agreement, an historical fact. Here’s what Ken said in his resignation statement (which is well worth reading – in full – if you have never done so):
At 8.50am on 28th April 2016 I was asked by Vanessa Feltz on BBC Radio London to respond to a social media post by the Labour MP, Naz Shah, quoting Martin Luther King, that ‘what Hitler did was legal’. King’s point, obviously, having been that just because something is legal (talking in the context of racist segregation laws in the US in the 1960s) does not mean it is right. I saw no relevance between Hitler and Labour so I responded in under 40 words pointing out that in the 1930s Hitler had supported Jews leaving Germany – including moving to Israel and he had arrived at a practical agreement with Zionist organisations on this.’
And the following is what Ken said in the interview:
‘Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932 [it was 1933, in fact], his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/ken-livingstones-resignation-from-the-labour-party/
All Ken meant when he said that Hitler was supporting Zionism is that Hitler obviously wasn’t opposed to an agreement (so as to bring the Zionist boycott of Nazi Germany to an end) and, as such, he backed the agreement that was finally reached between the Nazis and the Zionist Federation of Germany. The following is from the wikipedia entry:
‘The Haavara Agreement was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist German Jews signed on 25 August 1933. The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany. It was a major factor in making possible the migration of approximately 60,000 German Jews to Palestine in 1933–1939.’
As for Jeremy appeasing the smearers, Craig says the following:
‘We will never know what would have happened if he had come out and denounced the witch-hunt…..’, and shortly afterwards says: ‘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.’
Well I think it’s all too obvious what would have happened……. the smearers would have denounced Jeremy and castigated and vilified him in no uncertain terms, along with mountains of faux outrage. Of COURSE they would. I mean it’s absurd to think that all of the individuals and groups and organisations and the MSM and the Jewish newspapers who had conspired in the smear campaign were going to go along with Jeremy exposing THEM and concede that Jeremy is correct in what he says. Jeremy would have been denounced as a conspiracy theorist and, as such, an anti-semite, or conclusive proof that he is an anti-semite, and I have little doubt that dozens of ‘moderates’ would have penned and signed a letter to the Guardian etc, etc, etc.
Good article, very well-researched and informative, as always. I have been of the opinion for some time now (since 2016, to be precise) that the SNP are heading for the same fate as Labour, not only through the taking voters for granted and stifling reforms via increased membership and participation, but through an increasing predominance of careerists, entryists and controlled opposition within. With the steady convergence of the SNP with UK neoliberal party line, I don’t think we’re far off the point where we see leaks of this sort emanating from Sturgeon and Murrell HQ.
The UK is now effectively a one-party state and if Scotland is to divergence from the imminent disaster this will create, the SNP has to be gutted and fast.
Yes BP, how come they ended up with all those Byzantine rules?
That there are or have been some antisemitic cranks in Labour arises because there is essentially no vetting of members, but these people are few and disqualify themselves as socialists, obviously. The point is that there has not been anything like a crisis of antisemitism in Labour.
What Livingstone said was essentially true.
Craig – you may be interested to note that Rothschild bank apologised for involvement in slavery, although you are right that Jewish involvement is probably on a much smaller scale than other groups.
https://www.ft.com/content/56fcf9e6-659f-11de-8e34-00144feabdc0
Many thanks for the detailed review Craig – even from an initial perusal of the subversion within the Labour Party, parallels with recent moves within the SNP, struck me as obvious and ominous. I eagerly await your next report.
“I find it rather troubling that Keir Starmer seems more interested in suppressing this report than acting on its alarming findings …”
But not surprising, surely? Starmer is, after all, the principal beneficiary of the behaviour within Labour that did so much damage to Corbyn. He belongs to the anti-Corbyn faction of the party, whether or not he’s connected to its most egregious practices, so it isn’t surprising he’s currently doing his utmost to suppress evidence of what appears to have been their concerted effort to throw the 2017 election and undermine the party’s prospects generally under Corbyn. I paid money to these people. I want it back.
“– and I say that as someone who is not initially hostile to Starmer.”
Really? The man who went even further than Johnson in defending the current circus extraditing Assange? “The whole idea was to take the politics out of it. And therefore, in any extradition case, the judge, a high court judge in most cases, has to decide whether it’s lawful or appropriate whether the evidence is there to extradite someone, so it’s independent judges.
“So all of those in the Assange case or any other case, who say it’s all a big conspiracy are either missing the point that this is an independent judge-made decision or they’re implying that our High Court judiciary is corrupt.”
Him?
He has inherited the fruits of the labour of moral and political degenerates, of which we are meant to assume he was entirely unaware for the last four years. If ever anyone represented a steely determination to deter any attempt to alter the political and economic status quo, it’s Keir Starmer. I’m about as hostile to him as a peaceful man can be.
@Forthestate
I think you put that rather well. The scales have fallen from Craig’s eyes in many matters but his analysis hasn’t quite caught up with actually-existing autocracy.
I do hope that the emails will be leaked. This report confirms what many have argued for decades. It is also laying bare much of the modus operandi of our illusory democracies. This is not unique to the UK of course, and it is not unique to the PLP, it is the very basis of the “Neo Liberal Consensus”… Globally: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”
There is more to it than that. It’s not just an ideology that has infiltrated the left. It’s a type of person who is attracted to working in this environment. They tend to fit the ‘goody two shoes’ school prefect type who always sucking up to the people higher up in the hierarchy, eventually an institution becomes bloated with these types, all with nothing much today but all concerned with appearing busy and proving just how loyal they are to the institution, as they get promoted they employ more and more people with similar traits and it becomes corrupt.
I briefly worked in student union management 20 years ago and I could see it happening there; 20 years later they’ve proceeded into national politics.
I strongly recommend watching David Graeber on the subject
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kikzjTfos0s
Like the bbc perhaps?
The material and psychological incentives are almost overwhelming, particularly to the aspirational. The penalties in the form of lower pay, wealth, status, respect and visibility are massive. Even the selfless are under pressure due to family responsibilities which human existence inevitably at some point entails. The behaviour you lament is inescapable but that is well known. The challenge is developing ways that make it less irresistible Do you have practical suggestions?
Anarchism
Indeed i want to see if the emails go upto the last election!
Cans of worms surely didn’t stop trying to lose that too did they?
I was very much hoping Craig would pick this up. As Craig says:
“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.”
This is essential if any kind of justice in this appalling case of Blairite / New Labour sabotage of the Labour Party is to be done.
When are “progressives”/”Leftists” going to realise that “parliamentary Socialism” (as opposed to revolutionary Socialism) constitutes nothing more than the worst kind of betrayal of the working class: a con trick premised on the lie that “change from within” is possible, you don’t need to fight for change, just keep your heads down and arses up and we’ll legislate in Socialism/Communism.
Since we’re in the business of belittling others for their political efforts, I would imagine that those of us who fought tooth and nail for Corbyn during the years in which he was vilified far more than any other politician in history did more for change by getting out of bed in the morning than you’ve done in a lifetime. Corbyn was a project worth supporting from the outset, and no amount of self regarding and thoroughly unwarranted condescension alters that.
My point was that Corbyn and his (non-“woke”) supporters, i.e. those essentially constituting “traditional”, “original Clause IV” Labour Party members, are, and always have been, naive (at best) and consciously disingenuous (at worse) in pushing the “change from within” line: either they don’t know their political theory or they are ‘merely ‘careerists living off the backs and hopes of the working class.
Corbyn’s election as Labour leader represented change from without, since most of those electing him joined the party to do so. A social democrat won the leadership, twice, and came within 2,500 votes of electoral victory which, despite the ongoing antipathy of a large section of the party, would have led to real change. I doubt Assange would be facing extradition right now, to give but one example. Thanks for the theory, but just as there are those with their heads down and their arses up, there are also those with their heads up their arses. Any change is severely hampered by this position.
The 1945 Labour administration (the only one that could ever be regarded as ‘radical’) was only made possible because, firstly, the working class said (through their votes) “We’ve fought your war, now we want what’s due to us” and, secondly, the PLP was still primarily working class from top to bottom and was prepared to put that sentiment into action (Barry Hindess, Perry Anderson and others have been writing about the ’embourgeoisement’ of the PLP since the 1960s, for those interested).
In passing, it is worth noting that a similar phenomenon took place in the period between the EU Referendum and the 2017 general election: the manual working class voted to leave in the former, not because they suddenly became racist/xenophobic but because neo-liberal globalism had progressively destroyed their conditions of existence and de-industrialised the West over the past 40+ years and the EU just represented more of the same. Once that job was done, they returned in droves to Labour (although northern Labour MPs were having to promise not to renege on their Out votes) because austerity was their next most important issue. There was no “yoof revolution” – the seat-by-seat stats don’t lie.
As I comment below, the role of the PLP since that freak result has been to “run Capitalism better”, not overthrow it.
How many of the 2500 votes were postal ballots?
Who cares? What’s your point? We’re talking about 2,500 votes. It’s not a lot, is it? Surely *that’s* the point, isn’t it?
Why not reinforce your point by listing the achievements of revolutionary Socialism in Britain and its degree of support along the British working class?
Where to start?
1. There are no achievements of revolutionary Socialism in Britain precisely because parliamentary Socialism has acted as a lance to drain any revolutionary fervor: if, as with religious ideology, one promises a better future to the huddled masses if only they are patient one can get away with a lot – emotions drop as surely as stones.
2. If you exhibited any knowledge of industrial relations in Britain, you would know that union bureaucracies have often also acted in this fashion to tamper down unrest at the shop-floor level.
So no achievements then or support. Thanks for clarifying.
Well said!
Oh all right but only because you say so.
how about “naff all”?
Parliamentary democracy is evolutionary autocracy, since only one side has any power to affect laws. The only change from monarchy is that the citizenry gets to change failing leadership by voice rather than spear. But the fact remains that there is no direct path for a citizenry to remove useless or worse than useless laws that representatives set. Same for communism btw.
We need a system where representatives can directly make laws, and the citizenry can directly reject laws it sees as onerous. Not just direct democracy, that is a dictatorship by the other side, but semi-direct democracy – where both the head checks the body, and the body checks the head.
Whether a functional socialism – universality and non-competition, or a functioning capitalism – fair competition, or a bit of both (should be a bit of both) appear, depends on the society.
But if a society has no direct say on how it is governed, only an indirect, skin deep ability to give the bureaucracy a face lift every x number of years, it won’t get either functional capitalism, nor functioning socialism, nor both – it will get kleptoparacitism from the ruling elite.. Until those spears become tempting. Just like the 2nd amendment, just like the Mandate of Heaven – a system of government that has not been balanced aside from at the extreme in 3000 years!
“…where both the head checks the body, and the body checks the head…”
This is, of course, the ideal.
The attempts of countries to transition from Capitalism to Communism thus far have either been hamstrung or defeated by a combination of external hostility and/or internal corruption before progressing very far, and so the answers to the questions of what the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “withering away of the State” (among many other issues) will look like have never even started to be given.
A radical transformation has already occured in what were once industrial societies where today 90 per cent and more are working in services creating intangibles rather than in factories making tangible goods. This has also reshaped the nature of the working class which once could be objectively defined as people working in farms, fisheries and factories in making physical items but is now only subjectively perceptible since they don’t use machinery, often work in small groups and increasingly engage online with colleagues and customers. The decisive change is that the majority of people employed in services use very little capital in the value creation process, though they require extensive physical infrastructure (high-speed broadband for example). All these changes require a paradigm shift in thinking, not least by those who hold fast to the view that value is only created in tangible good manufacture.
The working class is defined by its relationship to the means of production, distribution and exchange. This is universal and invariant, not farm and factory labour.
Following on from Squeeth’s comment:
1. It follows that only two classes are possible under the Capitalist mode of production (CMP): the capitalist class, who live off surplus value in one (or more) of its three forms (profit, interest, rent), and the working class, who must sell their labour-power in order to survive.
2. The working class may be further sub-divided into ‘intellectual’ and ‘manual’ fractions according to their stereotypical mode of labour, but this does not change their relationship to the means of production. Amusingly (and incorrectly), the intellectual working class are often referred to as the “middle class”, as if there were some mystical and never-quite-defined ‘middle way’ of being related to the means of production (simultaneously owners and non-owners!?), the epithet “working class” then being reserved for the manual working class.
3. The intellectual working class constitute those educated to the highest levels by the State to occupy positions in its apparatuses and the professions. In these roles, they serve to both run the CMP ‘on behalf’ of the capitalist class and to educate upcoming generations ‘correctly’: Louis Althusser, in defining the relationship between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ at this ideological level (where individuals become “supports of pre-given structures”), invoked Spinoza’s category of immanence/absent cause to avoid any mechanistic reduction – ideology is not conscious programming.
4. In terms of raw numbers: capitalists c.1%, intellectual working class c.10%, manual working class c89%.
5. As Marx proved 150 years ago, “machines cannot produce surplus value”, i.e. profit. Capitalists have understood this empirically (if not theoretically) in the realm of intellectual labour since the invention of the printing press, and the reproduction in new ways of the products of intellectual labour since then has repeatedly caused problems of creating a profit with processes involving low variable capital input. To ‘solve’ this problem, artificial value has been created for mass-produced books, recorded music, film, computer code, patents themselves, etc., by a system of licensing, patents, copyrights, etc.
6. This ‘problem’ is now starting to arise in the field of material production, where a combination of AI and mechanisation threatens to eliminate human labour-power (variable capital) from the production process altogether, thus eliminating the possibility of profit. Goodbye Capitalism? Not necessarily because, although they still don’t understand the theory, capitalists are already talking about ‘licensed production’ via robots, 3D printers, etc., and if people have been tolerating the bullshit of licensing in the intellectual field for hundreds of years they will almost certainly fall for it again in the physical field!
Well done for ploughing through that Craig and for providing your insight.
This country is in a dark place when its liberal media deems it un-newsworthy that the highest officials of the UK’s largest political party (by membership) were working to ensure the party’s electoral defeat. Officials who are on six-figure salaries, paid for by the members. No, nothing remotely scandalous or even newsworthy about that for a liberal media that has been obsessed with internal Labour politics for five years.
Almost as shocking as these officials’ hatred for non-white people and for anything vaguely leftwing is the sheer banality of their thought and their childlike abusive language. Where is the evidence of that great Westminster media myth that rightwing Blairites are British politics’ consummate professional and adults in the room?
You are still reserving judgement on Sir Keir Starmer but it is very telling that he had reputedly identified one of the worst of these elements – Emilie Oldknow OBE – to be the party’s next General Secretary. A lady who referred aides of Corbyn’s as “smelly” and “pubehead.” When you consider his reluctance to criticise the Tories’ disastrous handling of the pandemic (“now is not the time..”) and his admission that he “hated having to sell myself to the members,” it all gives a strong impression that the British Establishment well and truly has its Labour party back.
Kier Starmers membership of the Trilateral Commission should inform one of where his true loyalties lie –
https://www.prole-star.co.uk/single-post/2020/02/02/What-Do-Sir-Keir-Starmer-Henry-Kissinger-Jeffrey-Epstein-Have-In-Common-A-Powerful-Organisation-Youve-Probably-Never-Heard-Of?fbclid=IwAR1fpTfQsrWOsKuSgjqujRM4EK9xWAkdryQYlVq8PIYyx-XCuCgrK5Ow8ew
this post is severely underrated.
Sink The Think Tanks! (..and NGOs.. and ALL the billionaire foundations.. !!!)
So yes, neoliberals are true fascists, in every sense, but without the original theatrical uniforms.
They prefer the neckties and trouser suits.
@wonky ;O) ;o) ;O)
Parallels to the SNP almost certainly but also to the Democratic Party. The DNC would rather give Trump a second term (by running a mid stage Alzheimer’s victim) than allow moderate social reforms pushed for by Sanders. Also, Sanders like Corbyn was pathetically weak at confronting the machine.
I cannot get a copy of the report from the link above – is there another source available?
Go to this off guardian piece – there’s a link in the early part of the article.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/18/on-labour-and-the-nature-of-reports-leaks/
https://cryptome.org/2020/04/Labour-Antisemitism-Report.pdf
First of all congratulations to Craig on wading through all 851 pages of the report and extracting the pith of it so well, which articulates my own scrambled thoughts so far – I have got to p519 after a few days of reading sections at a time.
The first part about the attitudes of the Labour Party HQ staff to Jeremy Corbyn came as no surprise and just made me angry. But the handling of the antisemitism complaints has just left me profoundly depressed. It’s not just the incompetence of it, which is bad enough nor the possible use within the party to further attack Jeremy Corbyn, which has always been pretty obvious, but it is more the failure to get to grips with the issues as a whole in any substantive way that gets my goat.
The idea that one can trawl through thousands of Facebook and Twitter feeds to find shares and likes of posts that might or might not indicate that a Labour Party member (if they are ones) is antisemitic as if that is all antisemitism is is just absurd (as Norman Finkelstein pointed out in a tweet that is cited in the report and was also regarded as antisemitic!). Yet that has seemed to be the sum total of its complaints handling. There is a huge educational issue to be addressed not just within the Labour Party but generally to counteract the idea that knowledge consists only of memes and slogans to be thrown around.
Thanks for that, I had read the conclusion, but you have given some additional worthwhile points to ponder. For me it all hinges on the day that Pence (or Pompeo, can’t remember which) grinned at his audience of Israel supporters and told them that Corbyn “will not be allowed to be UK premier”. There was a lot more going on in the shrubbery around that last election than we will ever know about. As for Starmer, complete waste of space, why is he not holding the government to account, it seems we have to rely on Piers Morgan and the Sunday Times. Truly, social democracy is finished here.
@ DoctorK April 20, 2020 at 16:41
It was Pompeo.
Thanks DoctorK,
very few have picked up on this. Pompeo was not the only one with a knowing smirk on his face. Priti Patel was beaming from day one of the elections.
There may not be many of us but I for one have serious doubts about the election results.
The Tory owned UGov consistently had the Tories 10pt ahead
The counting was (not everywhere) carried out by a Tory owned company
As for Blair/Starmer regime; with the exception of the Greens, (SNP ??), we’re now back to a ONE party state the new owners of the party are comfortable with. The new owners are the same ones who own the Tories, LibDems. Happy days.
Thanks Craig, I’ve been waiting for your take, it’s depressing reading and the report doesn’t go far enough, I have the actual anti-semitism report in a PDF if you want to slog through it, though I think at this point we all know what’s going on now.
In labour it was Anti-semitism; in the SNP it seems that gender wars is where it’s at.
There is more to it than it just being a infiltration of the right or Neoliberals. There is a structural factor at play here. Middle class inspirational types Often post grads have built Up an entire Bureaucratic industry within all political parties, they are growing and they are pushing out anyone who has a genuine commitment to their politics.
It’s worth reading David Graebers ‘bullshit jobs’ on the subject
When I was young I used to wonder how the German people turned their country into hell on earth, but now I know and it scares the hell out of me.
@Shatnersrug
When I was young I used to wonder how the German people turned their country into hell on earth, but now I know and it scares the hell out of me.
They didn’t; in all the free elections in the Weimar Republic the German people rejected the NSDAP and they still managed to in the half-bent election of March 1933. It was the boss class that put the Nazis into office not the public.
A copy of the report can be found here: http://digi-jp.nl/200329-Labour-Report-Final.pdf
Thanks Jean Paul much appreciated.
“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”
Israel was paying wages ($75 a month to each fighter), arming and giving medical treatment to Jihadis in Syria based near the Golan defacto borders they also on occasion provided artillary support for them by claiming some mortar or shell hit their side of the line and then retaliating against Syrian govt forces who were fighting the Jihadis. This has all been openly admitted by a number of Israeli officials.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-acknowledges-long-claimed-weapons-supply-to-syrian-rebels/
ISIS affiliated groups were near the Golan in the Yarmouk Basin, they merged into the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army as the various groups came under increasing pressure from the SAA they all supported each other.
“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?”
That Zionists and Zionism do not represent the best interests of the Jewish people and that they were prepared to sacrifice Jewish lives and welfare in order to realise their dream of establishing a Jewish state. Also that Zionism and Nazism share origins in that they both arose in Austria during the slow disintegration of the Hapsburg Empire, that they both agreed the Jewish diaspora was a problem, Herzl argued antisemitism was “natural reaction” to the diaspora, I think he refered to it as an “unnatural pattern of settlement”. Herzl persuaded the Emperor to allow the antisemitic Karl Lueger to be appointed mayor of Vienna, although Lueger was really only rhetorically antisemitic, he didn’t do much against Jews, but his rhetoric was vicious, nevertheless Lueger was regarded as a good mayor who improved the city. Lueger inspired Hitler, who was living in Vienna at the time, and later lead many Germans to assume Hitler’s antisemitism was only a rhetorical vote winning ploy and like Lueger wasn’t serious about it. I would argue that the theoretical and political mistakes of Zionism as an ideology leads Israel to behave as it does today and those mistakes have been evident from the very begining in the way they dealt with European antisemitism, therefore these facts are highly relavent and important.
Meanwhile Labour Party members have received this, which suggests that but for the leaking they would never have been any the wiser. [NB also last paragraph].
“Dear members,
We thought we would share with you, a recent email received from Jenny Formby on behalf of the Labour Party, regarding the recently leaked report into antisemitism in the LP:
Please be aware that the party have condemned the leaking of the report, as with all leaks this damages our party and is unfair on staff who do not have the right to reply.
As soon as the Party was made aware of this leak, an internal investigation was immediately instigated and the ICO has been informed. In addition, the Leader and Deputy Leader have announced that in conjunction with our NEC they will be commissioning an independent investigation, this investigation will look at:
1) The background and circumstances in which the report was commissioned and the process involved.
2) The contents and wider culture and practices referred to in the report.
3) The circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain.
We are confident that the investigation will demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of members and staff work tirelessly for the good of the Labour Party but clearly it is essential to conduct a full and independent investigation.
——
Any CLP in receipt of a copy of the report or its contents MUST NOT share or distribute that material in any way, including on social media. Any individual who shares or distributes the report or its contents on an unauthorised basis will be immediately exposing themselves to potential significant civil and criminal liability.
It would be inappropriate to say more whilst these investigations are ongoing so thank you for your understanding and patience.
Kind regards,
Jennie Formby
General Secretary”
Hehehehe. So the party was damaged not by the previous Gen Sec and his staff but rather by whoever exposed their sabotage. The only outrage is that members have been allowed to see behind the curtain and understand what their membership fees have been bankrolling.
Crispa@17:38-Thanks for publishing Jennie Formby’s email to members. As I left the Party in June, I wouldn’t have seen it.
Anyone who is so cowed by the menace contained within it is even more foolish than their decision to remainin the Party. Thankfully I’m out of it.
“this investigation will look at:
1) The background and circumstances in which the report was commissioned and the process involved.
2) The contents and wider culture and practices referred to in the report.
3) The circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain.
We are confident that the investigation will demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of members and staff work tirelessly for the good of the Labour Party but clearly it is essential to conduct a full and independent investigation.”
Or, in other words:
“this investigation will look at:
1) Finding out who was responsible for this report being written and sacking them.
2) Whitewashing the contents of the report.
3) Finding out the whistleblower and crucifying them.
We will find one or two scapegoats and pin everything on them and make sure all sound people are exonerated.”
It’s interesting to compare how the Labour Party do things with the Conservatives.
Labour has something close to civil war, whereas a group regarded as extremists ten years before, and led by an unprincipled opportunist, seized control of the party and expelled and deselected twenty one senior and respected MPs with very little disapproval.
Whoops!
It’s interesting to compare how the Labour Party do things with the Conservatives.
Labour has something close to civil war, whereas a group regarded as extremists ten years before, and led by an unprincipled opportunist, seized control of the Conservative Party and expelled and deselected twenty one senior and respected MPs with very little disapproval.
Thank you Craig for this report regarding the leaked labour party investigation into alleged Anti-Semitism, not least for having taken up the prodigious task of wading through it. Like you it would be helpful also to see some of the background information from which the report was compiled, if only to account more fully for the motives that underpinned the central players in this drama.
Following on from that is an item on https://voxpoliticalonline.com asking the very pertinent question about why these people have not been suspended from the party. We can guess the answer but it will be a joy to see how it will be framed.
An excellent article. I agree about your criticism regarding appeasement and compromise. Many Jewish academics have said the same – have you read Bad News for Labour which examines the whole subjects in some detail and sets out what he should have done.
My opinion is that after the near victory of 2017 which really shook up his enemies – there was a concerted effort to ensure this wouldn’t happen again. His enemies couldn’t attack his policies and instead used the Karl Rove strategy of attacking his strengths — which were his record as a life long anti racist, his reputation as a trustworthy and honest politician and his huge army of supporters which made the Party the largest in Europe.
They did this on two fronts – Brexit and antisemitism – and pushed him into a hopeless Brexit policy which they knew would lose the election – indeed Lavery and Trickett presented a paper to cabinet in June 2019 they predicted the fall of the Red Wall if they reneged on their 2017 manifesto promise to Brexit. Corbyn resisted as hard as he could but in the end he capitulated to the pressures of the People’s Vote and the threats of gang of 4 splits. The same pressures were exerted on him by his enemies within and without the party on antisemitism and he was wrong footed and successfully portrayed as an antisemite and the Party as institutionally antisemitic.
The Karl Rove strategy was very successful and what was one of the main reasons people voted FOR him in 2017 – his leadership, was transformed by demonisation into the main reason people DIDN’T vote for him!
That and the framing of the election by Johnson and his media mostly around Brexit and Johnson honouring the 2016 Referendum result to Leave.
Sadly the wider policies didn’t get much of an airing and when they did they were rubbished by the Tory think tanks and the whole economist academic worlds view that these policies were affordable and good for the economy and the whole country was shut out by the media. It’s interesting to see that when the Labour policies when asked their opinion people liked them but as soon as the name Corbyn was attached they rejected them – such was the toxicity of the Corbyn image created by his enemies and their media. Says it all really.
Makes me bloody sick – we were cheated out of 2 elections..
Terry, I would like to add another tool that was used to undermine JC, alongside Brexit & Antisemitism, which was his purported association with Terrorists. Decades old photos were dug out, in particular, showing him with IRA leaders, and him attending a memorial ceremony in N.Africa at the grave of some bombed PLO members. This stuff added to the mix of hatred too. Had Jeremy been photographed shaking Gen. Pinochet’s hand, that would have been different.
or Juan Guaido’s..
The scale of Labour Party malfeasance and the betrayal of its membership was, and remains, outrageous. Labour members will be asking themselves whether it is worth remaining until Conference in the hope that some miracle of regeneration will salvage their aspirations for a genuinely social democratic party.
Meanwhile, I’m left with the disturbing conclusion that voters in the ‘red wall’ constituencies who voted Tory were not foolish or deluded at all. Corbyn demonstrated that despite his best efforts he did not actually represent Labour, that in fact a vote for Labour was a vote for the same old Blairite machine.
I suspect that Labour as an innovative next-generation party is gone and the dinosaurs rule the jungle again. This leaves us with the fruits of a broken democracy – an entire unrepresented generation, with the worst career chances in decades, declining life expectancy, diminished prosperity even before epidemic recession and Brexit, and fewer rights or access to justice than since WWII. I suspect there will be issue politics and anger. Whether any notionally socialist party will be able to focus and represent this remains to be seen.
It took a hundred years of work to get the labour movement to a become a coherent political party that could win an election, and that was a collection of small groups and the ultra elite Fabian society, who have never relinquished control of the party, in fact Corbyn’s attempt was the first since George Lansbury to break out.
Boy oh boy, does the British state have this thing mastered. Lenin and Trotsky did not arrive at the idea of violent revolution by accident. They were well aware of the power of the state
Shatnersrug
Perhaps the Fabians were responsible for giving the Labour Party a constitution which left it open to external manipulation.
Thank you, Mr. Murray, you have voiced one important thought about anti-semitism and criticism, which I support. I don’t have your experience and I cannot give clever illustrations, but I know that people on your blog are kind and forgive my way of expressing my views.
For my daily life, I don’t have to catch the subtle differences between sh*t varieties, or to come up with separate names for each sort. In my head I put all these “anti-semitism”, “nazism” with other types, such as “sexism”, “russophobia”, “racism” put it all in one box. Because their general sign is obvious to me.
It’s all the same crap – discrimination. This is a contempt for a quality that cannot be controlled (ethnicity, race, etc.).
But criticism of actions is completely different. I feel entitled to criticize actions, because actions are voluntary, actions can be controlled and there is responsibility for actions.
Accusation of discrimination is a common type of counterattack, it’s widely known. In the film “Ocean’s Eleven” there is the dialogue of exactly that kind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeaWJHpPfoM
The sad reality is that speaking out about the Palestinians’ hell — the slow genocide of occupied Gaza, facing almost daily attacks living on poisoned land and no potable water, along with the ongoing (since 2006) Warsaw Ghetto-like blockade, the apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem — is more dangerous to criticize than ever. Pro-Israel and Israeli political intervention has made speech critical of Israel political suicide in our western democracies. The case for BDS against Israel is stronger than ever because our own freedom of speech depends ultimately on Palestinian freedom.
Excellent article Craig, down the rabbit hole of the Labour party is madder than the hatter at the tea party. Corbyn never stood a snowballs chance in hell, he was a Labour leader far too polite and meek, in an alternative dimension those would admirable traits held in high esteem, back on planet Earth though, they are just chum for the endless swimming upwards Westminster sharks within the party, pity he’d have made quite a few chances for the better down South.
The oracle says you are correct, when it comes to the SNP, Labour are just that little bit further down the road, in the twisted self destruct mode, that started off with a leap into neoliberal land, in which they saw the grass was definitely greener for the few, but not the many.
What to do about Sturgeon, the woke brigade, and the London acolytes, can the party be saved? I think it can, will it deliver on a second indyref? Lets be having that article on the SNP, get the microscope out, its the frog legs/bulls eye disection time.
RoS,
I’m truly sorry that the rot has hit the SNP, it is a bizarre sight indeed to see a group of permanent staff for a party who’s raison d’etre is independence from the British state appear to be Die hard loyalists to the state. Redundancies are in order, I presume of course that the Scottish Civil Service are friendly with snp workers, go for drinks etc and applies for better jobs at either/or institutions. It’s all so NICE and COZY, too cozy.
Yeah its very disappointing, I suppose every political party has its General Mola’s Fifth Column, working within to thwart some sort of policy, individual or other.
Like the neoliberals within Labour, the SNP needs a good clearout, its the procurement of the correct sweeping brush (the right leader) that’s the tricky bit. In saying that, Labour had a fairly good man at the helm under Corbyn, the ancient Roman Senate would’ve been proud at the way some of his own party stabbed him in the back over and over.
@Republicofscotland “will it deliver on a second indyref?”
Not unless they’re certain that it will fail.
I found it surprising that you were not initially hostile to Keir Starmer. His history as a DPP shows a rather establishment friendly and callous character who does not appear to wear the blindfold IMO. Your concern for Julian Assange, which I share I would have thought would have made you hostile, as I am. This article says (and is similar to many others that I have read), “2013 the CPS pressured Swedish prosecutors into maintaining a fraudulent investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as a pretext for securing his arbitrary detention in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Uncovered emails show Starmer’s department writing to their Swedish counterparts, “Don’t you dare get cold feet!” ” Starmers lack of action in seeking justice for Menezes and Tomlinson, but the persecutions of innocent people and harsh sentences for young students and rioters make me believe that unless pushed very hard, he will do nothing about this report, and may even blame the whistle blowers. He likes going after whistle blowers. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/07/star-a07.html
Starmer is a yes man, a legal fixer, it’s why Blair wants him at the top of the party. I’m too was surprised that Craig said that too,
Though Labour isn’t a “European style social democratic government”as it went along with Brexit and didn’t support the legal action that could have allowed the UK to stay in the EU, and Jeremy Corbyn was pro-Brexit.
It continues to vehemently oppose Scotland have the chance to rejoin the EU and is shackling Scotland to a Tory Westminster.
There’s information that seems to show the resolution of antisemitism cases was deliberately delayed(eg. Ken Livingstone’s) in order to do maximum harm to Corbyn, his supporters and the party’s image.
Yet…. the party’s lawyers deem this info as somehow irrelevant to the EHRC investigation?
It looks like some people just want the EHRC blame to fall entirely and only on the party’s left, with nothing presented by way of mitigation. It stinks.
If Keir is of any kind of believer in both sides being heard fairly i.e., natural justice, and really desires unity, then it needs a fairer approach. Party apparatchiks cheered polls that showed the party’s ratings declining and denigrated members, colleagues in the Leader’s office and Labour MPs in the vilest terms.
Goose. St Starmer is in no way a believer in both sides being heard. Why would you even think he plans to do anything but to remove the left entirely from the party
I find it exceptional when you say: “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.”..Of course it makes sense, but I thought legality is often not based on making sense or not! How then their law farm, a well known company, is so confident that they will make the Labour Party financially bankrupt?
National Socialism is alive and well in the labour party centred around the warmonger Blair. He’s now making a coronavirus pitch to save humankind. The Tories own this vicious calamity and Hancock’s ‘reforms’ are central to the debacle.
Lack of PPE procurement and delivery is solely down to Matt Hancock.
28 March 2019 By email Jin Sahota Chief Executive Officer …
http://www.sccl.nhs.uk › letter-of-entrustment
From the Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP Secretary of State for Health and Social Care 39 Victoria Street London SW1H 0EU 020 7210 4850 28 March 2019
By email Jin Sahota Chief Executive Officer, Supply Chain Coordination Ltd Skipton House, 80 London Road, London SE1 6LH Dear Jin,
ACT OF ENTRUSTMENT – SUPPLY CHAIN COORDINATION LIMITED
I am writing this letter to confirm the terms of your official mandate and to record my formal instructions in relation to the operation of Supply Chain Coordination Limited (SCCL) which was set up to administer a new operating model, introduced as part of the wider restructuring of the supply chain, through which the NHS would procure its goods and services (known as the “Procurement Transformation Programme”).
This letter of entrustment is one of various steps that have been initiated to ensure that SCCL has its governance arrangements formally documented. Two such steps have already been taken; namely, the issue of the “Accountability Letter” dated 7th December 2018 to Mr. James Spittle following his appointment as the non-executive chairperson of SCCL followed by the issue of the “2018-19 Director Accountability” letter dated 23rd January 2019 to yourself as the Chief Executive Officer of SCCL and the Senior Responsibility Officer of the Procurement Transformation Programme.
On 1st April 2019, SCCL will commence what will be the final and very significant phase of the setup of its operations. The intention is that on that date the NHS Supply Chain model will move to a centrally funded model with a transparent pricing policy of “Buy Price = Sell Price” and the current arrangement with DHL for the operation of the Master Services Agreement (which provides procurement services for goods and services (except medicines) for the NHS) will come to an end”.
Also,
Hancock’s real purpose in giving procurement and delivery.
NHS Supply Chain: Driving the way forward
http://www.nationalhealthexecutive.com › Comment › nhs-su…
“The new NHS Supply Chain
The new operating model for NHS Supply Chain is now in place and operational. There are 11 specialist Category Tower service providers delivering medical, capital and non-medical products and services, and two support services for logistics and supporting technology.
The management function of the new NHS Supply Chain, Supply Chain Coordination Limited (SCCL), manages the towers and ensures that they work on behalf of the NHS to deliver clinical and non-clinically assured, high-quality products at the best value. The towers will do this through a more sustainable approach, including more rigorous and responsive management of supplier accountability, as well as through category strategy development.
Our goal of saving £2.4bn by 2022-23 will be achieved by:
Reducing unwarranted price variation and increase product range optimisation across the NHS;
Delivering clinically-assured, high-quality products at the best value and supporting procurement activity across the NHS;
Leveraging the buying power of the NHS at a national level;
Increasing usage of NHS Supply Chain from 40% to 80%”.
The only goal it reached was ‘savings’ so as NOT to deliver the PPE the NHS needs.
In the above you say the following:
“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 contacting 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”.
I felt the same and never got it either, then I discovered a book by the secretary to Bertrand Russell, Ralph Schoenmann, which goes in meticulous detail into this whole matter. Whether Livingstone has read this book I don know. but I recommend that you should Craig, because it makes for very interesting reading indeed. Ralph Schoenman The Hidden History of Zionism (1988) – it’s online here http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/
I am writing here as Director to the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy – IIPSGP- (www.educationaid.net) and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Middle East. (TRCME)
Hannah Arendt writes extensively of Zionist cooperation with the Nazis during the Holocaust in Eichmann In Jerusalem, she argues that the Nazis would invarabily appoint mostly Zionists to the Ghetto councils (Judenrate) who in turn played a role in facilitating the Nazis policies, Arendt concludes that if Jewish communities had been absolutely leaderless, more of them would have survived.
In some cases like Hungary Zionist officials sold the bulk of the Jewish community to the Nazis who by this stage were ill equiped to round up all Hungarian Jews and were increasingly corrupt (willing to take money to let some slip through the net). If the Hungarian Jews had gone into hiding or resisted the Nazis would only catch a few prominent members, but the Zionists called on the community to gather for transportation in order to ensure a few hundred wealthy and Zionist members of community could escape on a special train to Switzerland, the Kastner Train and this scheme had the approval of the Zionist movements leaders outside occupied Europe.