A response to allegations of antisemitism
JVL Introduction
TheArticle.com has agreed to publish a statement from Jewish Voice for Labour’s National Secretary, Glyn Secker, in response to allegations made against him in an article it published on October 18.
That article, written by John Ware, portrays Glyn Secker as someone against whom staff in the party’s Governance and Legal Unit had evidence of a number of instances of antisemitism, which it suggests were not pursued because of interference from the Leader of the Opposition’s Office (LOTO).
We publish below Glyn’s response to these charges as it appears now (2nd Dec) below the original piece on TheArticle website. That can be read in full here.
A statement by Glyn Secker, Jewish Voice For Labour (JVL) National Secretary
I am writing to point out misleading inaccuracies in this lengthy piece by John Ware in The Article on October 18.
I am not discussing here arguments about whether the Leader of the Opposition’s Office (LOTO) interfered in party disciplinary matters. I am pointing out serious inaccuracies in the allegations against me, relating to evidence that is personal to me.
Please note the following factual errors:
1. Ware writes: Secker is Secretary of the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) and the son of a Holocaust survivor.
My response – I gave Ware significant details of my family history in my letter to him dated 4/7/2019, in which it was clear that I am not the son of a Holocaust survivor. To make such an attribution is not only false, it is exploitative and offensive.
2. Ware writes: Whilst Milne acknowledged that, as with other ethnic minorities, there were “a very small number of Jewish people who can adopt antisemitic attitudes”, he did not regard the evidence against Secker as demonstrating that he was one of them.
However, the GLU felt they had evidence showing that Secker had at least taken his anti-Zionism to an inflammatory level, for the following reasons.
My response – The quote from Milne relates to my suspension on March 7, 2018 following charges connecting me to allegedly antisemitic posts on a Facebook group, Palestine Live. Within five days it was established that I had never posted to the group and I was swiftly restored to membership. During the five-day investigation, the Governance and Legal Unit (GLU) made no reference to any antisemitic posts alleged to have been made by me, on Palestine Live or any other forum.
None of Ware’s allegations featured in GLU’s investigations, not during the March 2018 investigation nor at any other time.
- Ware refers to a comment on Twitter in July 2016 after the Israeli justice minister said that advocating Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) was antisemitic. Ware says “the GLU considered that Secker had revived the antisemitic trope about Zionism as a malevolent all-controlling force that claims to represent the world’s Jews — when of course it doesn’t.”
My response – No such allegation was ever made against me in connection with that tweet and it had nothing whatever to do with my suspension two years later.
- Ware says that, also in 2016, I retweeted the American Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein in support of a Facebook post from Labour MP Naz Shah, which contained imagery “redolent of jam-packed cattle trucks transporting Europe’s Jews to Nazi death camps.”
My response – Not only is this a distorted description of the tweets and posts from Naz Shah and Norman Finkelstein, I have no record of having posted or tweeted as Ware alleges, he has not supplied any evidence that I did so, I have never been notified of any allegations about this, from GLU or anyone else, and it had nothing whatever to do with my suspension in 2018.
- Ware says that I had “posted suggestions that Israel was in cahoots with ISIS by purchasing ISIS oil, in order to fan the flames of antisemitism” and that this amounted to an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
My response – Ware put this allegation to me in a letter dated 24.6.2019, prior to the Panorama programme. He said your Facebook posts appeared to them [ the GLU] to be antisemitic.”
I sent Ware the Global Research articles ( Global.1 , Global.2 , Global.3 ) I had referenced in my Facebook post. He did not respond to my request for evidence that my posts were antisemitic and he did not feature this topic in his Panorama programme.
Again, I have had no correspondence from the Labour Party Governance and Legal Unit [GLU] or allegations by them on this matter at all.
Whie Ware does not seem to have issued any direct threats of Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation in the particular regard of Glyn Secker, I find it hard to believe that such a threat lies behind the reckless and evidence-free allegations against Glyn. We are all aware of a recent settlement to which this suspicion goes, and even more potently, of the reason why the appalling and anti-democratic English libel laws prevent us from mentioning, and almost from alluding to it. Even the US – not exactly an anti-Zionist power – dismisses English law on this issue as so deeply in breach of its First Amendment that no English judgment dependent upon these laws could be brought or endorsed in the US. Perhaps the relevant Zionist propagandist might bring his suits in the US?
The term truth will out seems appropriate here. Many people have questioned Starmers anti Left tactics since Aljazeera released Labour Lies. Ware and others are self-satisfied by recent wins as they see them but are missing the facts that Starmer has made their intentions obvious, and that could be a nasty surprise for them in the end
Another set of lies concocted by the establishment collective. Some people in very high places must be aware of the conspiracy to stop a progressive government ever being elected even though there can be no recovery without it. Another decade of neoliberalism and the UK will be a third world country.
The description of JVL as “anti-Zionist” is completely inaccurate – your articles have presented a careful and “nuanced” view of Zionism – and everything for that matter.
CORRECTIONS:
WhiLe Ware does not seem to have issued any direct threats of Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation in the particular regard of Glyn Secker, I
DO NOT
find it hard to believe that such a threat lies behind the reckless and evidence-free allegations against Glyn.