The Al Jazeera ‘Labour Files’ documentary series exposed afresh the rampant racism and war on democracy of the Labour right, both to sabotage the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and to purge the left from the party under Keir Starmer.
Now a new episode sees Martin Forde – the barrister Starmer reluctantly commissioned to investigate the report’s allegations and whose findings have been ignored by the Labour right and their media allies ever since – respond to the programme’s evidence and conclusions:
Watch and share widely.
The Labour Files – The Forde Response I Al Jazeera Investigations
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
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At a time when the Tories are accelerating their assault on democracy, the Labour leadership should be fortifying its defense. However, it will not be able to defend democracy if it isn’t prepared to respect it within its own movement. Across the country, left-wing members are being barred from applying to be a candidate, denying local parties the chance to vote for popular, working-class, talented people in a fair and democratic selection process. As Keir Starmer himself promised in 2020, “Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.” Reneging on this pledge sends an alarming signal to those whose trust you now seek to garner.
It also displays a lack of respect for those to whom we owe our very place in Parliament. Labour members are the ones who give up their time to knock on doors in the pouring rain. Labour members are the ones who campaign for local change in their communities. Labour members are the ones who keep the party afloat. The Labour membership is the soul of the Labour Party — you cannot crush one without the other.
Only a democratic party can provide the space that is needed to empower those with the creative ideas and transformative solutions this country desperately needs. Today, the division between rich and poor and the threat of ecological collapse are greater than ever before. Our aim should be to unite disenfranchised communities around a more hopeful alternative.
Corbyn was judged to have interfered in antisemitism cases, with the implication that his office tried to stop antisemites from being expelled. The truth was the opposite, as the EHRC quietly conceded. His team “interfered” only in the sense that they tried to speed up the handling of disciplinary cases his right-wing opponents in the party bureaucracy stalled in a bid to fuel the antisemitism smears.
Starmer is interfering in disciplinary cases too – and doing so openly and proudly, including overturning a decision in late 2020 by his National Executive Committee to reinstate Corbyn as an MP. But this time the EHRC seems unconcerned.
The EHRC has given Starmer its official stamp of anti-racism approval even as his officials drive out Jewish members in unprecedented numbers. These are Jews whose mistreatment no one in public life seemingly cares about – because they back Corbyn.
Last week, hot on the heels of that stamp of approval, and mocking the idea that Starmer’s party is interested in tackling racism, Labour barred its local constituency parties from affiliating with a range of progressive groups.
Those included Jewish Voice for Labour, which represents Jews highly critical of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the main UK organisation representing Palestinian interests, as well as Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour and the All African Women’s Group.
The Equalities watchdog’s “special measures” on Labour are also apparently not needed even though prominent Black party members, such as former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, also a Corbyn ally, complain that Starmer’s Labour has done nothing to address anti-Black racism exposed in the recent Forde Report.
The truth is that Starmer and the establishment media will not be satisfied until they have driven a stake through the heart of Corbynism, and its genuine commitment to anti-racism and a more egalitarian approach to the economy. That is why they have never sounded more desperate to vilify him and his supporters.
Email to CLPs warns them that any existing affiliations with groups campaigning for abortion rights, minority human rights, disarmament and a fully public NHS are cancelled
Image thanks to The Skwawkbox
The Labour party has banned local parties (CLPs) from affiliating with an array of groups supporting the human rights of ethnic minorities or campaigning for a public NHS, in yet another Stalinist move to limit members’ freedom of expression.
And local parties are being notified by email that any affiliations they already have in place are unilaterally cancelled – and that if a right-wing group is affiliated with the party nationally, they haveno say over whether that group affiliates with them locally.
One such email reads:
Organisations that are nationally affiliated to the party are eligible to affiliate to any CLP provided they pay the appropriate fee and the CLP cannot debate or decide on their affiliations.
…The following affiliations are therefore no longer valid and the CLP may not renew its affiliation without approval from the NEC. To do so would breach party rules. These are:
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stop the War Coalition, Republic, London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Jewish Voice for Labour, Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, All African Women’s Group, Health Campaigns Together, The Campaign against Climate Change Trades Union, Peace & Justice Project.
Yes, you read that right: a group campaigning for peace, human rights, women’s rights, disarmament and to protect the environment are not welcome in Keir Starmer’s Labour party and party member groups risk disciplinary action if they try to associate with them.
And of course, given recent appalling comments by the leadership and its agents, Jews who believe in the human rights of Palestinians are particularly unwelcome – and indeed are being disproportionately targeted by the regime in a campaign of blatant (but ignored by the media) antisemitism and discrimination.
Image of Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, Davos
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Shakespeare himself could not conceive of the dramatic fall from grace experienced by Jeremy Corbyn, under whose leadership between 2015 and 2019 the UK Labour Party could boast a mass membership of 600,000 to make it the largest political party in Europe, and under whose leadership Labour came within just under 2500 votes of winning the 2017 general election on a transformational programme of wealth redistribution, meaningful policies to end homelessness and poverty, and a foreign policy placing a priority on peace over war and hope over fear.
That his outstanding performance in 2017 came in the face of a concerted attempt by Labour Party officials to undermine his leadership and election campaign, and despite a treacherous PLP of unreconstructed bastards, this only makes the question of ‘What if?’ all the more salient and also tragic.
His successor, Starmer, went out of his way to court Corbyn’s supporters in order to get himself elected as leader, while announcing with the sincerity of a mafia boss that “Jeremy is a friend as well as a colleague.”
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The issue of antisemitism has again been weaponised to demonise the most principled anti-racist politician in Britain, again at the behest of an establishment of bastards in the eyes of which the Palestinian people are deemed children of a lesser God.
The issue within a Parliamentary Labour Party stacked full of apologists for apartheid and white supremacist Zionist ideology that underpins it, has never been antipathy towards Jewish people; it has and continues to be the thoroughly dishonest smearing of those who dare stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and their just struggle against occupation, siege, and the most sustained apparatus of injustice in modern history.
23/2/23 The quote “Jeremy is a friend as well as a colleague.” appears not quite correct. Unless it’s quoting a different occasion it should be “I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement, & who’s a friend as well as a colleague”. I wouldn’t truncate it like that without making it clear, that’s your academic rigour eh? Can be watched here
When Starmer succeeded Jeremy in 2020 he said “I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement, & who’s a friend as well as a colleague" What happened? pic.twitter.com/MTdLESB5qN
"I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our Party through some really difficult times. Who energised our movement and who's a friend as well as a colleague."
I suspect Starmer had to double-mask during the pandemic, because he's a two-faced Tory fraud and stooge. pic.twitter.com/YgnzJUCbvW
LABOUR “does not belong to one man but to its members,” campaigners declared today after Sir Keir Starmer vowed Jeremy Corbyn would never again be a Labour MP and told critics of his leadership to quit the party.
The increasingly right-wing Labour leader, who expelled his predecessor from the parliamentary party in 2020, claimed the party he took over nearly three years ago is “unrecognisable and we are not going back.”
In a speech in east London, Sir Keir hailed a decision by watchdog the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to lift Labour out of two years of special measures over its “past failings” on anti-semitism.
But Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) slammed the “alarming news,” stressing: “Jews like us do not feel safe in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.”
The socialist group said its research shows that Jews have been “at least 37 times more likely to be investigated for anti-semitism than an average Labour Party member” since the former shadow Brexit secretary took the reins in April 2020.
KEIR STARMER’S Times interview exposes a Labour leader as arrogant as he is dishonest.
Few would disagree with his claim that Labour is “unrecognisable” compared with 2019 — but an honest media would ask this would-be prime minister some searching questions about that.
How does he defend standing to lead the party on a platform of continuing the socialist policies of Jeremy Corbyn, and why, if he was lying then, should we trust him in government?
When he tells anyone unhappy with the way he has changed the party that they are welcome to leave, what gives him the right?
Why should an MP only elected in 2015 tell activists and campaigners of decades’ standing to take a hike? More importantly, why should affiliated unions — which have already seen one of their number, the BFAWU, disaffiliate in disgust — allow a leader to abuse a position he obtained under false pretences to fundamentally change the character of the party they founded?
Former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn joins members of the National Education Union (NEU) on a march through Westminster where they are gathering for rally against the Government’s controversial plans for a new law on minimum service levels during strikes. Picture date: Wednesday February 1, 2023.
APACKED Conway Hall saw the British launch of The Big Lie, a film depicting the Establishment campaign to destroy Jeremy Corbyn, on Thursday night.
The Platform Films production directed by Chris Reeves covers the rise of the Corbyn movement, its 2017 high point when it won Labour’s largest vote share increase since 1945, and the forces which eventually brought it crashing down.
In a post-screening discussion with Mr Reeves and Platform Films’ Norman Thomas, Morning Star editor Ben Chacko said the film was an important exposé of the direction of the current Labour Party, and the character assassination of Corbyn was ongoing — being used to prevent him from standing for Labour in the constituency he has represented since 1983.
Stephen Kapos says he has a duty to teach others about his experience whether Starmer and co like it or not
As Skwawkbox predicted last week, Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos has been driven out of the Labour party in yet another demonstration of the antisemitism and arrogance of the Labour right.
It has been brought to the attention of the Labour Party that you have been advertised as a speaker for an event entitled ‘Zionism During the Holocaust – Reclaiming the Memory of All Those Who Died’, hosted by Socialist Labour Network on Friday 27th January 2023.
In line with Labour Party rules, Socialist Labour Network is a group which the NEC of the party has determined is incompatible with Labour Party values. Any support for the organisation would likely be deemed in breach of Party rules and may lead to expulsion.
Yours sincerely,
London Labour
But rather than back down to the cowardly threat, to which the party drone who sent it didn’t even dare put his or her name, Kapos – a constituent of party leader Keir Starmer – resigned his membership, saying that his duty to teach people about the terrible slaughter at every opportunity – and to stand up against Israeli apartheid against Palestinians – was too important to bow to petty tyrants and their so-called ‘Labour values’:
Dear London General,
Thank you for your emailed letter of the 24th of January giving me advance warning that I am likely to be expelled from the Party if I were to speak from the panel as a Holocaust survivor at the SLN (Socialist Labour Network) Webinar on the 27th January — on Holocaust Memorial Day.
The Holocaust is the most important single example of genocide, which at its worst descended into an industrial process of mass murder of millions.
As a child survivor and one of the fewer and fewer still living direct witnesses to the Holocaust I feel a compelling duty to bear witness and speak out about it at any platform that would invite me and to any audience ready to listen.
I am an activist for Palestinian human rights and an active member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in its Camden Branch. The defence of Palestinians living under a brutal occupation is very important to me, particularly as a Holocaust survivor. Palestinians live under a system of apartheid as recognised by Amnesty International and other major human-rights organisations. Those are my political beliefs which I claim are protected characteristics under the Equalities Act 2010.
I am not a member of SLN nor have I been following its activities, but via the book to be discussed on the 27th I have a general understanding of SLN’s views on present-day Zionism (as a political movement ) and on some of the actions of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust and WWII. I am in sympathy with some of those views on the grounds of my political beliefs mentioned above. I have personal experience of the Kastner project in Hungary which was driven by Zionist ideology.
Email and letter details courtesy of Tony Greenstein
Left-wing Jewish activist Tony Greenstein, one of the first to be expelled during Labour’s mass purge of Jews who stand up for Palestinian human rights, published the video of Kapos speaking at the event about what he saw and suffered:
Solidarity with Stephen Kapos and all those targeted by the Labour right’s regime.
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LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer is a “tool of the Establishment” who deliberately undermined Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party, legendary film director Ken Loach has charged.
In excerpts from his interview in the upcoming documentary film Oh Jeremy Corbyn — The Big Lie, the award-winning film-maker said the ex-shadow Brexit secretary acted like an “undercover spy cop” at his predecessor’s top table.
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In the film, due to receive its premiere in central London next month, Mr Loach says: “Every now and then, to show that we’re a democracy, there’s a change of government.
“The party changes, but it’s so important from the Establishment’s point of view that the alternative party won’t change anything — and that’s what Starmer is proving now.”
