Don’t you dare speak to Forde!
JVL Introduction
Members of Labour’s NEC are being treated like children in need of cocooning, warned to keep well away from that bad man.
The bogeyman in question is Martin Forde KC, commissioned by Keir Starmer personally to do a thoroughgoing investigation into the circumstances of the Leaked Labour Report and the allegations contained within it.
Starmer said at the time:
“[Forde] has got complete freedom to go where he needs to go, such is the determination to root out any racism in our party and deal with it – and be seen to deal with it – effectively.”
But Forde’s report didn’t say what the leadership wanted to hear, so he is now being treated as a non-person – or one too dangerous to engage with.
This article was originally published by Skwawkbox on Mon 20 Mar 2023. Read the original here.
Labour bans NEC members from meeting with Forde
Elected representatives told they can’t meet with barrister commissioned to investigate leaked Labour report – who has said party is not tackling racism and treats other forms as less important than supposed antisemitism
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An interesting question arises which I have not seen anyone comment upon. Why was Martin Forde chosen to head the inquiry?
The most immediate explanation would seem to be that Forde was chosen because he was a highly respected black barrister whose credentials would give credibility to a report whose final published version Starmer believed he and his clique had sufficient leverage to be able to control should any of its conclusions prove awkward. According to that immediate explanation Starmer clearly misjudged Martin Forde.
However a more Machiavellian complementary reason as to why a respected black QC was chosen should also be considered as a possibility. Perhaps Starmer was hedging his bets with this choice. For surely he could have predicted that if Forde proved sufficiently strong minded to produce a final report containing unpalatable content, the corporate media could be relied upon to ignore the opinions of its lead author in a manner which would have been far more difficult had that author been a white barrister of similar standing.
Interestingly Martin Forde has noted in an unrelated article published online by Counsel magazine:
“I don’t think we [black barristers] benefit from those from conventional backgrounds crediting us with any, or even equal, intellectual ability. In my very early days when I did crime, and once I managed to persuade people that I wasn’t a well-dressed defendant, they would sometimes take me seriously. As an advocate generally, I have been reticent about telling a judge from a conventional background that they’re wrong. But I’ve noticed that my white counterpart has no such qualms. It just feels as if, coming from me, it would sound more challenging. So I try to be more persuasive rather than confrontational, in the way that I think some of my peers might get away with.”
Can someone explain why the NEC would take any notice, call him into next meeting
This too makes me so sad. The far-right seem to have taken over the party and are leading us where?
The Forde report needs to be openly discussed at all levels
Like all sycophants, Starmer serves and protects those he believes to be in actual control. No-one believes more devotedly in *that* particular trope than he does.
Forde’s comment “In my very early days when I did crime, and once I managed to persuade people that I wasn’t a well-dressed defendant” reminds me of an incident whilst working for a national children’s charity when an African Caribbean man was recruited at the senior national manager and chair. He turned up to chair his fisrt formal meeetings with his staff and was told to “wait outside with the other clients”. They were a bit shocked when he announced he was their new manager!
What Forde is facing now is discrimination in action from within the LP. He might want to refocus/rebalance his idea about who is most to blame for the expulsion, marginalisation and silencing of left members.
I attended a very good webinar held by Compass today where Martin Forde was the main speaker. He was clearly feeling pissed off with him and his being ignored and sidelined. .
After listening to Martin Forde speaking the other day on a TV interview you can see what a genuine person he is and someone who will not suffer fools
His comments about the emails from the BBC You can see has annoyed him and I think he realises that there were certain things that were not avalable to him which he now wishes had been
I dont think he is a man who will take those emails lightly because as he said he has been in the job for 38 years
I don’t think we have heard the last of this because when you think about it what the BBC was doing could be classed as intefearing in a legal report in order to try and change the mind of the very well respected man who wrote it in order to protect their well paid positions in the BBC
Are they allowed even to LISTEN to him? Tragedy or farce?
This is deeply offensive to Martin Forde. He needs to consider setting up abn organisation to draw attention to the way he and others have been treated. Starmer has no ideas about taking our country in a different direction. All he is concerned about is Labour ‘winning’ and him becoming PM.
Reading accounts today of the Casey report on racism and misogyny in the Metropolitan Police I was alarmed to see that police officers have been behaving like staff at Labour Party HQ.
There is a difference in the response however in that the new Commissioner has promised to try to do something about it. He could instead have done a Starmer and said that the problems were purely historic, that insofar as they were real his appointment to the top job had resolved them automatically and that anyone who was still not happy should shut up and go away. If any victims within the police service were still complaining he could then have sacked them.
Oh Dear – Starmer thinks that honest people are going to “keep quiet” – It wont be long before the Conservatives drop the “Corbyn supporter” tag they are sticking on Starmer when he lied about “supporting his then leader” and move onto what a disgrace the Labour Party is and was – i.e. not wanting to win an election in 2017 and 2019 !!! If I were a Tory strategist -I would keep this shameful episode out of the press etc until the election is called!!!! Best to deal with it now and get a new Leader – (not Starmer or Streeting) also let Corbyn stand as a Labour MP – thats at least one seat Labour would win!!! The LP is going to have this shameful episode dredged up at the next election – the “boil” needs lancing now ! Starmer and Evans need to go, for Labour to have a chance! Oh and some decent policies – like the ones in Starmers 10 pledges – now abandoned!!!
This is a variation on the old Liverpool joke ‘what do you call a scouser in a suit? answer ‘The accused’. Now is this a trope or just a stereotype or maybe a protected characteristic?
It is puzzling, to say the least, that on the Labour Party website that has recently been updated and deals with policy in relation to complaints, it appears that there have been more complaints about anti-semitism than about every other form of “protected characteristic” combined.
In response to Pam:
The fact that 65% of complaints were for antisemitism is a reflection of the scale of the selective and factional internet trawls, out to destroy the left rather than fight antisemitism.
Forde witnessed a hierarchy, in that factional efforts were prioritised by Labour HQ staff also in processing antisemitism complaints. This factionalism meant other complaints were largely ignored, or as Black and Muslim victims have said ‘never treated as seriously as those for antisemitism’.
The fact that other racist Labour complaints total only 7.3%, whereas they represent over 60% of hate crimes ( to 1-2% for antisemitism) provides some idea of the seriousness of the distortion these factional attacks have caused, and this needs to be corrected urgently.
Could someone explain to me who has the authority to stop the NEC meeting Forde. I was under the impression that the Labour Party’s supreme authority was the NEC. Or am I missing something very obvious?
To Pam Laurance….You mention more AS complaints to the Labour Party than those about other hate. Normally, I would imagine, complaints come from victims. People who have been hurt byracist encounters etc. Most of the Labour Party’s antisemitism complaints came from a handful of people engaging in full time dustbin digging social media etc trying to find Labour members to accuse. The numbers they chose to regard as guilty resulted in the appearance of a tsunami. of antisemitism. But many of the complaints were connected to people who were not in the party, and many I imagine (from having been harassed by these full time dustbin diggers) would have been perfectly acceptable criticisms of Israeli govt and IDF behaviour. I think the campaign to make the party look guilty with overwhelming complaints and often dodgy ‘evidence’ created an unprecedented situation. No other institution has been treated in a similar way. I’d be interested to know how many of the complaints came from people who were actual victims of racism, and not from people dedicated to finding examples which in their opinion would be recognised as tropes etc motivated by the wish to get rid of Corbyn, which they expressed very clearly, and celebrated publicly when they succeeded. This was an exercise run in very bad faith and created a completely false impression of reality.