Ray Goodspeed (Leyton and Wanstead CLP) reviews the four programmes in this explosive series.
During recent Labour Party conference, many members of the Labour Party and socialists and trade unionists more widely, will have been shocked to see a series of four documentaries broadcast on Al Jazeera (click on “Labour Files” ) exposing the organised, scurrilous attacks on rank-and-file socialist members by the Labour right and the misuse of disciplinary procedures to purge the left, acting hand-in-glove with the full-time officials of the party,
The documentaries are based on an enormous leak of emails and other material from the Labour Party – so large that there are probably even more revelations to come in future. They contain interviews with the victims and some illuminating film footage of some of their adversaries.
Of course, socialists should never blindly or uncritically accept any news outlet, including the shamefully biased, pro-establishment BBC. Al Jazeera is based in Qatar and funded by the government of that profoundly repressive and undemocratic regime. They will undoubtedly have their own agenda and reasons for making these films.
Yet I have seen no attempt to disprove the allegations, to take legal action or to question in detail the evidence presented. It seems that those accused of wrongdoing are content to rely on bland, blanket denials that are broadcast at the end of each episode, safe in the knowledge that the mainstream media will be totally silent on these revelations. Such is their sense of impunity.
Many will have seen the programmes as they were broadcast on the Al Jazeera TV network or subsequently caught up via videos on You Tube, where the episodes are considerably longer and contain even more damning evidence than the TV programmes. If you have not seen them, then I strongly advise you to do so. Each episode is linked at the end of this article and also linked to the episode title in the relevant section.
For a number of viewers, much of the content will come as no great surprise, as they will have suspected such behaviour based on their own experiences in the party. However, the leaks of electronic emails and messages allow the concrete evidence of the scheming and plotting to be laid out in a systematic way, with the veil of secrecy torn asunder, and this still has the power to shock – and to disgust. The level of arrogance and dishonesty is truly remarkable. Many socialists on the left of the party and even those mainstream Labour loyalists with any sense of decency will react with anger, revulsion and bitterness.
The purge
The first instalment – The Purge – deals with the attempts by right wing members, often local councillors or MPs, to purge members whom they perceive as threats to their position or to the right of the party in general. Emails from these worthies to Labour’s regional and national officials are exposed, openly colluding in such factional manoeuvring and dealing in fake smears. These range from accusations of homophobic behaviour in Wallasey, the CLP of Angela Eagle, leading to the shutdown of that CLP prior to her abortive challenge to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, to allegations of spitting or abuse of members and venue staff at a CLP meeting in Brighton, again leading to the meeting being declared invalid and the elections of a new, pro-Corbyn officer slate annulled.
And yet, although there were 17 people who made the same, co-ordinated complaint in the Wallasey example, not one single member has ever been suspended for any of these alleged (aka fabricated) offences. Similarly, in Brighton, video evidence makes it clear that no intimidation or spitting happened, but the truth, of course, always comes too late and the immediate factional task is accomplished. Tom Watson is shown to have relied on a preposterous, obviously faked document to build up a sinister narrative of “organised Trotskyist infiltration”.
Trotsky and Trotskyists seem to be a constant nagging preoccupation of the Labour right, those who still think ice-pick jokes are amusing, or even that people outside their ridiculous clique even understand the reference (Trotsky was murdered with an ice-pick). These people, even those not alive in the 1980s, are haunted by the growth and influence enjoyed by Militant supporters back then, and for good reason! The ideas of Marxism will always be a constant threat to these representatives of the establishment within the party. Fighting “Trots” is obviously more important to them than fighting the Tories and the class they represent. They know which side they are on.
Other targets mentioned in the broadcasts include Anna Rothery, a Liverpool councillor who was prevented from standing as Mayor, and Pam Fitzpatrick, a senior councillor in Harrow and Chair of Planning, the victim of a sustained period of harrassment, including, ludicrously, being suddenly judged unfit even to be a rank-and-file councillor, even though she was the Labour Parliamentary candidate for Harrow East in 2019!
Fitzpatrick was a victim of an unsavoury character who appears a few times in the programmes, Luke Stanger, who compiled a dosser on her and specialises in bullying and abusive tweets, using completely unacceptable language which, had he been a socialist, would have been taken much more seriously. But he is a close pal of Luke Akehurst of “We Believe in Israel” and “Labour First”, who is now on the party’s NEC. He is so close, in fact, that Akehurst wrote his emails for him, defending him against the complaints.
Though Stanger was eventually suspended, dozens of rightwing politicians wrote supportive references for him. Meanwhile, his victim, Pam Fitzpatrick, has been expelled for giving an interview to a proscribed socialist newspaper – long before it was proscribed. Those looking for justice from the Labour Party officials are clearly wasting their time.
The antisemitism crisis
The second episode of the Labour Files – The Crisis – focuses on the bitterest issue of the last seven years – that of allegations of antisemitism. It is the longest of the four, and in many ways the story is the most well-known, having been splattered across the front pages of the right-wing press and of the liberal centrist press and broadcast media for what seems like a lifetime. Only a brief summary can be given here. It is essential viewing, and builds on a previous expose from Al Jazeera – “The Lobby”. Much of the ground has also been covered by the famous “leaked report” and the recently-issued and long-awaited Forde Report.
The programme tells the familiar story of how, having tried many other absurd smears against Corbyn and his supporters, the accusation of antisemitism became the most effective. Starting off slowly, accusing Corbyn of “not acting fast enough” it was whipped up to fantastical levels of nonsense by 2019 – suggesting that Corbyn was “an existential threat” to British Jews. This undoubtedly led to many in the Jewish community having genuine fears of the Labour party, specifically stoked by the right-wing Jewish newspapers and establishment figures.
We need to be absolutely clear. The original “leaked report”, the Forde Report and these documentaries all agree that there were examples in the Labour Party of members who held utterly repulsive, antisemitic views. On behalf of the Programme makers, Andrew Feinstein, the veteran Jewish member of the South African ANC and a lecturer on the Holocaust and genocide prevention, went through a complete, leaked download of complaints handled by the party from 2014 onwards. He found unambiguously antisemitic facebook posts, tweets etc that no socialist party should or would tolerate or defend.
There is no place in the movement for that vile nonsense. But he also found vastly more examples of social media posts concerned with the actions of Israel, which were NOT antisemitic. Several Jewish scholars who were featured drew distinctions between antisemitism and criticising the Israeli state or government, and outlined how pro-Israeli Jewish groups are seeking to conflate the two into the concept of the “new antisemitism”.
The real scandal
The real scandal of that period is not so much that a small number of antisemites existed in the party, bad as that is, but that many of those who were whipping up, exaggerating and weaponizing a real problem for factional advantage were the very ones who were also mainly to blame for not dealing with it, wasting their time instead on trying to find and expel “Trots” to prevent them from voting for Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 leadership challenge.
The programme makes it clear that Corbyn only started to get control of the disciplinary process once Iain McNicol had shuffled off in the spring of 2018, along with many of his accomplices and underlings, and been replaced as General Secretary by Jennie Formby. From then onwards the number of suspensions and expulsions dramatically rose as procedures were put in place. Indeed, what the programme does not point out is that under intense pressure from the press, some party members were unjustly suspended or expelled in 2018-19 under that very process, while Corbyn was still leader!
Following on from the Forde report, which reached similar conclusions, this episode destroys the credibility of the disgraceful Panorama programme put out in June 2019 by the reporter John Ware. In particular, it is clear that the attempt to accuse Corbyn’s staff in the Leader of the Opposition Office (LOTO) of interfering in processes to “save” allies of Corbyn was, in Forde’s words, “wholly misleading”. They had been expressly invited to comment and were mostly concerned to speed the disciplinary process up!
In the Panorama programme, these accusations were made by party officials who were clearly part of the anti-Corbyn faction. Further, most of the Jewish members who gave evidence to Panorama were not named or properly identified as officials of the pro-Israeli, anti-Corbyn organisation – the so-called Jewish Labour Movement. Al Jazeera seriously challenges some of their testimony. Importantly, it also exposes the legal advice given to the Labour Party regarding its later legal dispute with some of these witnesses, which, to say the least, casts strong doubt on the decision of the party to pay compensation out of court.
This is consistent with a wider historical issue regarding Jewish people and their relationship with Zionism. Essentially, the party right had taken sides in an intense ideological struggle going back well over a hundred years between Zionist and non- or anti-Zionist Jews. The views of the latter are disregarded, and, disgracefully, they have themselves been accused of antisemitism. The Al Jazeera documentary does a very important service in giving these Jewish socialists, many of whom are members of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) a voice to explain their views and to describe the horrendous abuse to which they have been subjected.
Palestinians silenced
The IHRA definition of antisemitism, mistakenly adopted by the NEC in the full heat of a media firestorm in 2018, had been specifically promoted so as to conflate hatred of Jews with political attacks on the state of Israel. The worst effect of that has been to silence Palestinian voices. Not only do they have to endure the monstrously brutal treatment of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government, army, settlers and so on, but they now have the very words they use to react to such brutality micro-policed, so that only polite terms acceptable to their oppressors are acceptable. Acceptance of the IHRA definition means the denial of their own national rights, as the foundation of the Israeli state in Palestine was accompanied by widespread ethnic cleansing, violence, terror, murder and the denial of Palestinian national identity.
The programmes identify a number of key characters, who appear and reappear at various points to harass socialists and spread misinformation. In particular, it identifies Jonathan Hoffman, Richard Millett, Roberta Moore and Sharon Klaff, extreme pro-Israel activists who, incredibly, have been rather uncomfortably chummy to fascist, Islamophobic activists such as the English Defence League (EDL).
Hoffman, for example, is an extremely aggressive, intimidating and abusive bully whose intention is clearly to disrupt and break up all events of the pro-Palestine movement or any meeting which disagrees with his personal narrow definition of antisemitism. Hoffman was one of those involved in the confected media storm about Corbyn’s comments about “English irony”. In spite of this, these characters were allowed to present themselves as mainstream Jewish commentators on the media, without the most cursory background check. Hoffman was on TV as an “advisor” to the reasonable-sounding “Labour Against Antisemitism” (LAA). In the whole antisemitism crisis, 12% of all the complaints were made by LAA alone. Moreover, one unnamed person was responsible for 23% of complaints.
The “Hierarchy of Racism”
The third programme in the series – The Hierarchy – contrasts this single-minded obsession with one kind of racism – antisemitism – with the comparative neglect and disregard of other types, especially anti-black and Islamophobic racism. The leaked dossier and the Forde report has extensively portrayed the casual abuse of black Labour politicians by senior staff, and this programme supplies more examples. It also follows the Forde report by talking to BAME Labour Party staff, rank and file members and local councillors about how their complaints of racism are simply disregarded or dealt with very leniently compared to antisemitism complaints which, apparently, were the explicit priority.
Investigations were slowed down, put on the back burner or quietly dropped if the perpetrator was a friend of senior politicians of the Labour right or high-profile TV personalities. The writer and broadcaster, Trevor Phillips (former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission!!), was quietly readmitted with no fanfare after making remarks that would probably have seen him expelled if he had mentioned Jews rather than Muslims. By contrast, Marc Wadsworth, a founder of Labour Party Black sections and a veteran anti-racist campaigner was suspended for years and finally expelled for “bringing the party into disrepute” over a trivial and innocent remark made to a right-wing MP whose Jewish identity he was not even aware of – a clear and obvious double standard.
BAME staff were side-lined, marginalised and discriminated against in a recruitment and promotion process that relied too much on “networking” or just plain nepotism. A “Black Community Engagement Plan” was drawn up by senior managers that did not even consult or involve BAME staff. It said next to nothing about addressing the concerns of BAME voters.
Deeply sinister
In Newham, a deeply sinister dossier was compiled, containing multiple infringements of privacy, about leading left Labour activists, mainly Muslims, leading to the wholesale closure of both CLPs in the borough, amid claims of a “Muslim takeover” in one of the most ethnically diverse boroughs in the country.
The evidence, then, of outright racism in the Labour Party and of a hierarchy of racism is clear, but in fact I believe the situation is more complex than that and arguably even worse. It is not simply that the officials and right-wing Labour politicians care more about one type of racism than another. The sad truth is that some of these people don’t care about ANY type of racism (or indeed any other specific oppression) unless it can be weaponised for their cynical, factional purposes. Everything is subordinated to their overall project of defeating the socialist left.
Allegations of racism, sexism or homophobia are “useful” if the alleged victims are on the right, but similar allegations can be safely ignored or minimised if the victims are socialists. The mildest political criticism of a female council leader by a male socialist is labelled misogyny, but the party officials can happily tolerate the appalling sexist treatment of Apsana Begum, because she is a principled socialist MP.
Invented stories of homophobia can be used to further the career of a right-wing MP, as in Wallasey, but the clear transphobia of Rosie Duffield (MP for Canterbury) has been completely ignored. Left-wing Jewish socialists can be abused in appalling, antisemitic terms, but that is judged to be OK because they are not supporters of Israel.
Spying
The fourth programme – The Spying Game – a twenty-minute bonus episode that was only released on YouTube, deals with the truly eye-popping revelations from Croydon Council in South London. Left-wing Labour councillors, concerned at increasingly serious economic mismanagement of the Council, wrote to a journalist, Stephen Downes, at the website Inside Croydon. This had been forbidden by the Labour Group leadership.
The leadership then acquired hacked emails from the journalist’s account, showing the emails from three Labour councillors. There are good arguments to suggest that not informing the journalists or the councillors of this could be a breach of data protection law. Labour officials were informed, but no action was taken. Even the Labour MP for Croydon North, Steve Reed, (amazingly, the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice!) was made aware of what was going on but no action was taken.
That is appalling enough, but then then Stephen Downes realised that a bug had been placed on his email account which blind-copied emails he received from the three councillors to the Council leader and the former Chief Whip! This must surely raise very serious legal issues that need to be thoroughly investigated. Of course, Labour lost control of Croydon council in May 2022 as it went into financial meltdown.
Since these programmes were made, the ability of the Tory party to destroy itself has seen the Labour Party leap ahead to astonishing leads in the opinion polls. Starmer and the clique around him and the right-wing majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) are probably feeling very secure right now as the Tories lurch from crisis to crisis and a new mood of unity emerges in the party to some degree . They have continued to be ruthless in blocking almost any candidates of the left in selection processes for MP candidates, including Emma Dent-Coad, who took Kensington from the Tories in 2017 for the very first time and is the Leader of the Labour Group on the Council!
Burning resentment
But they should never think that socialist Labour Party activists will ever forgive or forget what they have seen in these documentaries. Many have left the party in disgust, it is true, but those who have stayed will also carry a burning resentment against the Starmer leadership and against the full-time apparatus of the party, who have been utterly discredited and have forfeited any trust they may have enjoyed.
A Starmer government, which now seems very likely in spite of his dishonesty, vagueness and lack of charisma, will face massive pressure from day one of taking office. We can all see how the markets, aka international capital, have brought down the hapless Truss government. Should Starmer take power in an economic crisis, he would come under pressure to abandon even the minimal reforms he has managed to promise, and we can be pretty sure he and the Labour right will barely raise a finger to resist.
Labour and trade union activists will be forced to protect their living standards and become increasingly radical in their demands and actions. They will need to learn lessons from the ruthlessness and dishonesty of the Labour right, laid bare in these valuable programmes, and prepare to take them on with their eyes wide open.
All four episodes are available on YouTube:
Part 1: The Purge
Part 2: The Crisis
Part 3: The Hierarchy
Part 4: The Spying Game
