“Mr Corbyn’s leadership wrecked Labour’s record as an anti-racist party and led to huge swathes of the Jewish community to question their future in…”

“Mr Corbyn’s leadership wrecked Labour’s record as an anti-racist party and led to huge swathes of the Jewish community to question their future in Britain.”
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** Special briefing: As voting closes to select Jeremy Corbyn’s successor, what are the candidates’ records on antisemitism and how should we judge their performance?
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Dear
John,
I hope that you and your loved ones are keeping well during this pandemic crisis.

We are sending you this special briefing because voting has now closed to select Jeremy Corbyn’s successor as leader of the Labour Party.

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership wrecked Labour’s record as an anti-racist party and led large swathes of the Jewish community to question their future in Britain. For the new leader, restoring the Party’s credibility must begin with disciplining Mr Corbyn. He must be made to bear personal responsibility for his central role in cultivating anti-Jewish animus in his Party. The leadership candidates have talked of a ‘litmus test’: disciplining Mr Corbyn must be it.

In this special briefing, we wanted to remind you of the personal records and platforms of each of the candidates on antisemitism, and to explain why disciplining Mr Corbyn is the first test of his successor’s seriousness in tackling the Labour Party’s institutional antisemitism.

Whoever is announced as the winner of the election this weekend, Campaign Against Antisemitism will be there to hold them to account.

We will be in touch again on Saturday evening, when Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, has ended, with any reactions and further thoughts.

Thank you for your support, and to all of the volunteers ([link removed][UNIQID]) and donors ([link removed][UNIQID]) who make our work possible.

Wishing you good health,

Gideon Falter
Chief Executive


** Contents
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1. Why disciplining Jeremy Corbyn is the ‘litmus test’ (#litmus)
2. The three candidates’ records on antisemitism (#candidates)




** Why disciplining Jeremy Corbyn is the ‘litmus test’
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The new leader of the Labour Party will commence his or her term in office during the worst health crisis in living memory, but that must not delay dealing with another priority, addressing the Party’s need for internal reforms, starting with unravelling its institutional antisemitism.

On the campaign trail, the contenders have often spoken of the importance of a “litmus test” to evidence whether antisemitism is being taken seriously. Naturally, the recommendations of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which will come in due course, must be implemented in full. But the real litmus test is more immediate and it has a name: Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Corbyn’s leadership failed electorally, moreover it wrecked Labour’s record as an anti-racist party and led to huge swathes of the Jewish community to question their future in Britain. Restoring the Party’s credibility is no small task, particularly if the new leader is from Mr Corbyn’s frontbench, but it must begin with disciplining the outgoing leader.

The EHRC’s full statutory investigation into Labour was launched following a formal referral from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant. But what has not been revealed until now is that the original impetus for the investigation was the Labour Party’s repeated refusal to treat seriously a series of complaints that our organisation made against Mr Corbyn.

The process of repairing the Labour Party must begin with the man who did so much to break it by refusing to address its scourge of anti-Jewish racism and at times personally indulging in it.

Mr Corbyn’s offences during his long parliamentary career are documented on our website ([link removed][UNIQID]) . They include working to excommunicate Labour’s Jewish affiliate; claiming that Israel exercises an outsized influence in the British media; describing the antisemitic genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Hizbollah as his “friends”; endorsing the comparison of Israel’s policies to those of the Nazis; trying to undermine the centrality of the genocide of the Jews in Holocaust Memorial Day; writing an adulatory foreword to an antisemitic book; defending an Islamist preacher banned from Britain for indulging in the medieval blood libel that accuses Jews of using the blood of non-Jewish children to bake bread; backing the disgraced Reverend Stephen Sizer; defending an obviously antisemitic mural; suggesting that British “Zionists” lack a sense of irony despite having lived here their whole lives; instigating the whitewash Chakrabarti Inquiry and then
awarding its author with the peerage that he promised never to bestow on anyone; victim-blaming The Guardian’s Jonathan Freeland for raising the matter of Labour antisemitism; and directly interfering in numerous disciplinary cases on behalf of the offending Labour members while standing by (at best) while Jewish women MPs were hounded out of his Parliamentary Party.

To top it off, Mr Corbyn was opposed to the adoption of the International Definition of Antisemitism by the Labour Party. He may have been motivated in part by the recognition that allowing the adoption to proceed might highlight his own multiple breaches of the definition and require the Party to act against him. Regrettably, even after the Party’s reluctant adoption of the definition, it failed to do so.

But Mr Corbyn’s retirement as Labour leader is only the first step. What matters now is how his successor deals with him. It is not enough simply to ‘draw a line’ and start afresh; the whitewash Chakrabarti report into antisemitism in the Party tried to do that several years ago and the problem only got worse.

It is Mr Corbyn’santi-Jewish legacy that must now be addressed and exorcised from the Party, and that must begin with him. Our review of the records of all Parliamentary candidates in the recent General Election showed not only that Mr Corbyn was himself responsible for a breathtaking fifteen percent of all incidents involving antisemitism, but that Labour’s candidates accounted for a breathtaking 82 percent of all of the incidents across all parties.

Most worryingly, however, was the finding that a third of incidents related to Labour’s new candidates who had never held Parliamentary office before. Far from investigating and eliminating antisemitism, as he deceptively claimed, Mr Corbyn and his allies in the Party’s headquarters and on its ruling bodies have injected more of it into Parliament.

This problem is not confined to the House of Commons: one post-election poll ([link removed][UNIQID]) showed that nearly three quarters of Labour members said that the issue of antisemitism in the Party was “invented or wildly exaggerated”, with that denial rising to over 90% among members of the pro-Corbyn Momentum group. Only one in five Labour members agreed that “antisemitism was a real problem” in Labour.

Naturally, the Party’s disciplinary processes must be made independent and its sanctions enhanced – that much is clear. There are plenty of other important measures that the Party should introduce, and we have made those recommendations to the EHRC as part of our recently-concluded legal submissions.

But Mr Corbyn must be made to bear personal responsibility for his central role in cultivating anti-Jewish animus in his Party. This will send a message to other culpable MPs, officials and members that they cannot hide.

The candidates have talked of a litmus test: disciplining Mr Corbyn must be it.


** The three candidates’ records on antisemitism
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Today, voting for the new leader of the Labour Party closed, with three candidates having made it through the three-month election process. The result of the primary is due to be announced on Saturday.

The winner of the contest, who, as head of the largest opposition party, will also take the post of Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, will become the head of an institutionally antisemitic party that is being investigated ([link removed][UNIQID]) by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), following a complaint by Campaign Against Antisemitism.

Previously, Campaign Against Antisemitism analysed ([link removed][UNIQID]) the records of the leadership hopefuls in order to inform the public, and to this we now add the stated positions ([link removed][UNIQID]) of the candidates with regard to internal Party reforms and addressing the antisemitism crisis. As the result of the vote draws near, it is vital for the Jewish community and the wider public to be aware of the victor’s platform in order to hold him or her to account.

The deepest stain on the records of each of the candidates is the fact that they stood by ([link removed][UNIQID]) the Labour Party during the years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership despite its descent into racism. They were bystanders ([link removed][UNIQID]) when several Jewish colleagues were hounded out of the Party, and they stood by too when principled colleagues made the difficult decision to leave ([link removed][UNIQID]) the Party because they could not countenance campaigning for the antisemite Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister, which all of the three candidates themselves did at the end of last year. Whether these candidates can ever reclaim any
authority to speak out against antisemitism — or indeed any form of prejudice — is therefore doubtful.

The two candidates who served as senior figures in Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet and most actively campaigned to make him Prime Minister, in the face of polls ([link removed][UNIQID]) that showed almost half of the Jewish community were considering leaving the country if they were successful in their campaign, are particularly unlikely ever to be able to provide a satisfactory justification for their failure to stand up to Mr Corbyn.


** Rebecca Long-Bailey
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Rebecca Long-Bailey was one of those members of the Shadow Cabinet, serving as Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. She supported Mr Corbyn’s ideology and leadership — which she recently rated ([link removed][UNIQID]) “ten out of ten” — throughout the past several years, to the point of being widely viewed today as the continuity candidate.

Despite representing a constituency — Salford and Eccles — with a Jewish population, Ms Long-Bailey reportedly ([link removed][UNIQID]) showed little awareness of issues important to the community in her first few months in office.

This lack of awareness apparently spread to the media as well, as Ms Long-Bailey gave an interview to the controversial far-left website, The Canary, subsequently explaining ([link removed][UNIQID]) that she was “not aware of concerns about The Canary at the time” of the interview. Lord Mann, the Government’s independent advisor on antisemitism, has announced ([link removed][UNIQID]) that he will be investigating The Canary and other far-left websites in relation to the rise in antisemitism.

When it was revealed that Mr Corbyn had written ([link removed][UNIQID]) a gushing foreword to a reissue of J.A. Hobson’s 1902 work, Imperialism: A Study, in which the author cast the blame for great wars on the Rothschilds and their control of the media — Mr Corbyn described the book as “correct and prescient” — Ms Long-Bailey defended ([link removed][UNIQID]) him.

Ms Long-Bailey was also said ([link removed][UNIQID]) to have opposed ([link removed][UNIQID]) the adoption by the Labour Party of the International Definition of Antisemitism ([link removed][UNIQID]) , opting instead to back ([link removed][UNIQID]) the infamous “code” that was floated by Party insiders as an alternative to the Definition in order to dilute it.

She recently claimed ([link removed][UNIQID]) that she spoke out on antisemitism in internal Labour meetings over the past few years and that if she were elected leader she would work “very hard and very robustly” to tackle antisemitism in the Party. She added that “I wasn’t happy with the way our process was being run.” Such comments echo those of her most prominent backer, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, whose persistent references to “process” during the election campaign represented an effort to deflect attention from the reality that the Party was home to legions of antisemites and an antisemitic leadership. In any event, Ms Long-Bailey’s claim to have spoken out on antisemitism behind the scenes has been disputed ([link removed][UNIQID]) .

Given this record, it is unsurprising that Ms Long-Bailey has been endorsed by Pete Willsman, a pro-Corbyn member of Labour’s National Executive Committee who has been suspended from the Party twice. It is equally reasonable that she was accused ([link removed][UNIQID]) , just a few days ago, by a fellow MP of being “partly responsible for the failure of Labour to stem the tide of antisemitism within its ranks.” The MP went on to say: “How she can now claim to be concerned about an issue that cost us the election — it’s staggering hypocrisy.”

Turning to Ms Long-Bailey’s stated positions ([link removed][UNIQID]) during the campaign on internal reform and antisemitism, she intends to resolve outstanding and future antisemitism cases swiftly and under a fixed timetable using an independent disciplinary process. Prominent offenders who have been expelled from Labour would not be permitted to return to the Party and anyone who supported or campaigned for them would be suspended, under her plans. She would implement ([link removed][UNIQID]) in full the EHRC’s recommendations, engage with the Jewish community only through reputable representative organisations and conduct antisemitism training via Labour’s Jewish affiliate.


** Lisa Nandy
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Lisa Nandy has consistently spoken out against anti-Jewish racism in the Labour Party and has acknowledged ([link removed][UNIQID]) that a “particular sort of antisemitism has found its home on the far-left throughout history.” She added: “I have been a member of this party for twenty years, and what angers me most is the assertion that a person cannot be left wing and stand up to antisemitism — standing up to antisemitism is a core part of my values.”

Ms Nandy also criticised ([link removed][UNIQID]) the handling of the revelations of historic antisemitic statements by Naz Shah ([link removed][UNIQID]) in 2016 and opposed ([link removed][UNIQID]) the readmission of the disgraced then-MP, Chris Williamson ([link removed][UNIQID]) , in 2019, observing that “we have no right to pick and choose the type of racism we confront.” Although she sat in Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet in its first few months, she, along with numerous colleagues, quit, helping to prompt the 2016 leadership contest.

Ms Nandy participated in an event ([link removed][UNIQID]) at the Labour Party conference in 2019 that featured Omar Barghouti (appearing via video link), who rejects Israel as a Jewish State and is a prominent figure in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, the tactics of which an overwhelming majority ([link removed][UNIQID]) of Jews find intimidating. However, Ms Nandy left ([link removed][UNIQID]) the room before Mr Barghouti spoke. More recently, Ms Nandy endorsed ([link removed][UNIQID]) a troubling platform of policies issued by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which we have found to be riddled with ([link removed][UNIQID]) bigotry ([link removed][UNIQID]) .

Like her colleagues, Ms Nandy too is guilty of having stood by Labour even as it degenerated into an institutionally antisemitic party and campaigned for a government that would have been led by Jeremy Corbyn, despite the unprecedented fears of the Jewish community.

Ms Nandy has promised to implement the same policies ([link removed][UNIQID]) as Ms Long-Bailey, including resolving cases swiftly and under a fixed timetable through an independent disciplinary process; prevent the readmission of prominent offenders and suspend those who supported or campaigned for them; implement ([link removed][UNIQID]) the EHRCs recommendations in full; relate to the Jewish community only through genuine representative organisations; and engage Labour’s Jewish affiliate to provide antisemitism training.

In addition, Ms Nandy has made fighting antisemitism in Labour a central plank of her campaign and has pledged to take “personal responsibility” for doing so, including by introducing antisemitism training for members and staff and lowering the threshold for suspension over allegations of racism.


** Sir Keir Starmer
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Sir Keir Starmer has served on Mr Corbyn’s frontbench in the influential position of Shadow Brexit Secretary and has been a vocal advocate of Mr Corbyn’s leadership. A former Director of Public Prosecutions, he has insisted ([link removed][UNIQID]) , contrary to all the evidence, that Labour is not institutionally antisemitic (in an interview, incidentally, in which he conceded that denying Labour antisemitism was itself part of the problem). He has also claimed ([link removed][UNIQID]) that Mr Corbyn is not particularly to blame for the antisemitism crisis that has engulfed their Party, but rather that there is collective responsibility, thus by his own admission implicating himself.

When Mr Corbyn’s defence ([link removed][UNIQID]) of the antisemitic mural in East London came to light, Sir Keir declined to condemn the Labour leader, advising instead that Mr Corbyn “had given his explanation”. In case there was any doubt as to Sir Keir’s commitment to Mr Corbyn’s leadership of Labour and his effort to become Prime Minister, during the election campaign, Sir Keir reiterated ([link removed][UNIQID]) that he was “100% behind Jeremy Corbyn”.

Having now lost the election and apparently recognising the political advantage of disassociating himself from Mr Corbyn’s leadership, Sir Keir has announced ([link removed][UNIQID]) that “the handling of antisemitism [in Labour] has been completely unacceptable. It has caused deep distress for the Jewish community, which we must all accept responsibility for and apologise.” Sir Keir is hardly the first politician to offer cheap words; one suspects that there would have been little in the way of apology or responsibility had his ambitions of government been realised.

Sir Keir has insisted, like Lisa Nandy, that he would take “personal responsibility” for addressing Labour’s antisemitism crisis, and has proposed a similar agenda ([link removed][UNIQID]) to the other candidates, including resolving cases swiftly and under a fixed timetable through an independent disciplinary process; prevent the readmission of prominent offenders and suspend those who supported or campaigned for them; implement ([link removed][UNIQID]) the EHRCs recommendations in full; relate to the Jewish community only through genuine representative organisations; and engage Labour’s Jewish affiliate to provide antisemitism training.

Additionally, Sir Keir has proposed scrapping Labour’s National Constitutional Committee – the Party’s main disciplinary body – in favour of the new independent disciplinary process. He has also called for an end to the imposition of parliamentary candidates by Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, a process that was blamed ([link removed][UNIQID]) for numerous worrying candidacies at the previous General Election.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched ([link removed][UNIQID]) a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties ([link removed][UNIQID]) research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted ([link removed][UNIQID]) for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 ([link removed][UNIQID]) showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

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