George Wilmers replies to his latest Notice of Investigation

JVL Introduction

Dr George Wilmers, a member of Jewish Voice for Labour, received a new Notice of Investigation from the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit on 13th December 2021.

It followed one received eighteen months earlier and responded to at the time – see here.

In this extended reply George explains why he sees these NOIs as harassment, containing as they do veiled insinuations of antisemitism, and paying scant regard to principles of natural justice.

He details the history of the first “investigation” and responds firmly to the new Notice of Investigation with a rejection both of its request that he construct a case against himself and that he keep the matter confidential.

Read on, below.

To the “Investigations Team” of the Governance and Legal Unit

Cases CN-XXXX and CN-YYYY

From: Dr. G.M.Wilmers

Dear Anonymous Investigators,

I confirm that I am in receipt of your “Notice of Investigation” CN-XXXX sent by email on 13/12/2021.

I request acknowledgement of receipt of this response by return email.

I experience both of the NOI’s to which I have been subjected over a period of some 30 months as personal harassment. These actions of the Labour Party may also constitute harassment in a legal sense for reasons which I indicate below. 

I advise all those hitherto anonymous persons involved in drafting and communicating the above NOI to read carefully my reply below before proceeding with any further actions.

This reply should be read until the end without interruption. You may need to read it more than once.

You should be mindful of the fact that, in view of the status of the Labour Party as an unincorporated association, your decision to communicate with me anonymously may not necessarily protect you personally from any civil litigation and/or data discovery process with which I may proceed should your response prove unsatisfactory. It would therefore be prudent on your part to ensure that any further communication concerning this NOI is signed by an individual who has full authority and is willing to assume personal legal responsibility in this matter. If you personally are allocated responsibility for drafting any reply or other missive to me, I would strongly advise you to request your immediate supervisor to take responsibility for it by signing it personally, or by requesting the General Secretary of the Labour Party to sign it. As far as I am concerned, except for the reference and case numbers, this reply to you is not private, and for the enlightenment of all I encourage you to share its content with your colleagues.

I remind you that, as you will almost certainly be aware, this is not the first such notice containing veiled insinuations of a scurrilous nature which I have received from the Labour Party. I refer to a similar Notice of Investigation CN-YYYY dated 31/07/2019. On that occasion I refused to engage with the insinuations of antisemitism in that document for reasons which I made clear to you in my lengthy reply dated 5/08/2019, in which I exposed in grim detail the totalitarian nature of the Labour Party’s disciplinary procedures. These procedures not only violate virtually every principle of natural justice, but are also inconsistent with the recommendations of the Chakrabarti report, which the Labour Party has accepted but never implemented.

I am referring to this previous NOI and my previous response to it because I believe it to have been a case of personal harassment by the Labour Party of a kind which the Labour Party is now repeating in a very similar manner.

With reference to the previous NOI CN-YYYY, having requested that I reply to the NOI within seven days, the Labour Party completely ignored my response for six months, at the end of which time the party wrote to me on 4/02/2020, still ignoring the substance of my response, but informing me that:

“Members of the NEC Disputes Panel met and considered your case. The Panel found that, subject to the final approval of the next meeting of the NEC, your behaviour on this occasion did not amount to a breach of the Party’s Rules. However, they considered it appropriate to remind you of the high standards of conduct the Party expects of its members.”

To this I replied on 11/02/2020 in the following terms

1. I note that you chose not to reply to or even acknowledge the many substantive points which I made on 5 August 2019 (emailed on 6 August) in my comprehensive reply to your initial notice of investigation of 31 July 2019. Nor have you answered a single question which I posed to you concerning the conduct of this so-called investigation.

2. Instead of engaging with my reply to you, you have chosen to continue the ”investigation” behind my back, and have convened some sort of “panel” which, without bothering to involve me in any way, has come to the conclusion cited above. I am naturally pleased that the panel finds that my behaviour “on this occasion” did not amount to a breach of the Party’s rules, but the tone of the communication and the frankly insulting homily which follows, unmistakably imply that I am considered to have behaved improperly.

3. For the above reasons I wish to make clear that I do not accept the decision of the panel in its present form, and I therefore request that the matter be referred to the NEC itself, which must however be given full access to my reply cited above, which you have chosen to ignore. In short I request proper answers to my questions and that I be completely exonerated without any disingenuous caveats.

4. Your email refers to “members of the Disputes Panel” having met to consider my case, but does not explain whether this was an official meeting of the Disputes Panel itself, nor does it explain under what official procedure these members met to discuss and evaluate my “case”, having refused to engage with me regarding the content of my email of 6 August. Please explain

5. I am also requesting an apology for the disgraceful manner in which I have been treated. I would remind you that in your initial letter you state that “at no time during an investigation does the Labour Party confer an assumption of guilt on any party”. How then do you account for the weasel words directly following your finding that my behaviour had not breached Party Rules:

“However, [the members of the panel] considered it appropriate to remind you of the high standards of conduct the Party expects of its members”.

The arrogance inherent in this sentence should be contrasted with the utter disregard for the norms of civilised conduct with which the Legal and Governance Unit has conducted itself in relation to my person.

Indeed in relation to Rule 2.1.8 which it was insinuated that I might have broken, it appears to me that that accusation was made against me because I have been targeted as a Jew by fanatical persons who hold that political support for the ethnocratic nature of the actually existing state of Israel is an essential characteristic of being Jewish, and that because I reject such a dogma as repulsive, I am to be hounded out of the Labour Party. I hereby denounce such targeting as antisemitic, and itself a violation of Rule 2.1.8, with which the Labour Party, by its persecution of Jewish members adhering to the great universalist traditions of humanity espoused by Jewish thinkers from Spinoza and Marx to Einstein and Chomsky, has sadly become complicit.”

Once again the Governance and Legal Unit totally ignored the substance of my email, replying curtly on 19/02/2020 as follows:

“The NEC Disputes panel, consisting of elected members of the NEC, met and reviewed your case. The NEC approved the panel’s decision to issue you a Reminder of Values, therefore making the decision final. There is not an appeals process for members issued with a Reminder of Values, as the letter outlines that the outcome of the investigation did not amount to a rule breach.”

The dismissive arrogance of this reply led me to publish a detailed account of the case under the title The Labour Party Inquisition – A Case Study, which can be found here.

This provides a useful reference which I commend to you, that you may appreciate the force of my arguments in case you, or some third party on which you rely, have lost or mislaid my original correspondence.

Surprisingly, in view of the resources which either the Labour Party or an enthusiastic external actor devotes to searching my social media posts, you do not refer to this particular article, although it was widely shared. Perhaps you find that its contents make uncomfortable reading.

I contend that this earlier correspondence indicates clearly that the original NOI CN-YYYY should never have been made and that its delivery constituted an act of harassment. The NOI did not present any charges, nor did it supply any evidence or reasoning as to why my single alleged speech act might constitute a breach of Labour Party Rules. As noted above I myself refused to engage with the process from the outset except to challenge the procedure. Since no formal charges were ever formulated and therefore there was no quasi-legal process in which I could have defended myself against such charges, and since the state of the declared evidence, or lack of it, was exactly the same at the end of the process as at the beginning, the substantive conclusion that I did not breach Labour Party Rules could, and therefore should, have been reached prior to issuing an NOI, without involving me in any way.

There is more which can be inferred from the behaviour of the Governance and Legal Unit and its collaborators on that occasion. Despite my detailed analysis of the totalitarian system of jurisprudence practised by the Labour Party, the Governance and Legal Unit disregarded every single one of the substantive criticisms I made, refusing to engage with rational argument – presumably because they had no reasonable answers. Yet when I demanded an apology for insinuations of antisemitism which I had denounced and they themselves had subsequently rejected, none was forthcoming. To the contrary I was insultingly delivered a so-called “Reminder of Values”, endorsed by the NEC, with no explanation whatsoever as to why such a reminder would be appropriate.

The conclusion is inescapable that either this behaviour constituted an obstinate refusal to admit a serious error of judgement, or that both the NOI and the subsequent reminder of values were intended as acts of intimidation intended to silence my legitimate political expression of support for the rights of the Palestinian people. In either case I consider the behaviour of the Labour Party in relation to CN-YYYY to have been been of a personally harassing and intimidatory character and I repeat my demand for an apology.

I now turn to consideration of your latest NOI, CN-XXXX. 

Before proceeding further I wish to record that for legal reasons I will not engage with the substance of your insinuations against me until I have received a written response from you concerning the following two notifications which I hereby communicate to you:

A: I formally notify the Labour Party that I am of Jewish ethnicity. 

Accordingly I request you to confirm in writing, no later than 31st January 2022, that the Labour Party recognises me as sharing the protected characteristic of that ethnicity as defined by the Equality Act 2010.

B: I notify you that I am not a Zionist, and that I abhor the ethnocratic character and settler colonial practices of the actually exisiting Israeli régime, which have been characterised as apartheid by leading jurists and respected human rights organisations. In that precise sense I am an anti-Zionist, and I hold this conviction to be a logical consequence of my deeply held democratic and antiracist beliefs. I therefore contend that my anti-Zionism, as defined above, constitutes a protected philosophical belief.

Accordingly I request you to inform me in writing no later than 31st January 2022 as to whether or not the Labour Party accepts that my anti-Zionism as defined above constitutes a protected philosophical belief as referenced in the Equalities Act 2010.

I am taking these steps because, as in the case of the previous NOI, the present NOI insinuates that I hold and/or have expressed antisemitic views. I contend that such insinuations are false, potentially defamatory, and constitute an attack on my personal identity. Furthermore I hold that, if based on the particular “evidence” supplied in the NOI, the “draft charges” could only be justified by an illegitimate conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism.

With regard to the wholly unacceptable procedures outlined in the present NOI I note the following:

1.  The NOI requests me to respons to “draft charges”. [I have copied your draft charges at the end of this email in Appendix 2 for convenient reference]. As previously I refuse to answer vague insinuations which masquerade as draft charges, apparently because you are either too indolent or too cowardly to formulate properly reasoned allegations of rule violations. If you present me with “charges” rather than “draft charges” then I will respond in an appropriate manner, though the appropriateness may not be to your liking.

2.  I reject your request that I treat this NOI as a confidential matter. You hypocritically invoke fairness to myself and to the complainant(s), but you offer no information whatsoever to me concerning the anonymous complainant(s), nor concerning your own identity; yet you have the insolence to invoke the Data Protection Act with unspecified threats to me, at a time when the evidence suggests that the Labour Party has repeatedly committed breaches of confidentiality in relation to my own data.

3.  Chapter 2, Clause I.8 of the Labour Party Rule Book which you invoke provides that:

“No member of the Party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the Party. The NEC and NCC shall take account of any codes of conduct currently in force and shall regard any incident which in their view might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on age; disability; gender reassignment or identity; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; or sexual orientation as conduct prejudicial to the Party: these shall include but not be limited to incidents involving racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia or otherwise racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions, sexual harassment, bullying or any form of intimidation towards another person on the basis of a protected characteristic as determined by the NEC, wherever it occurs, as conduct prejudicial to the Party. The disclosure of confidential information relating to the Party or to any other member, unless the disclosure is duly authorised or made pursuant to a legal obligation, shall also be considered conduct prejudicial to the Party.”

Your “draft charges” against me refer to a violation of this rule, and baldly state that I have engaged in conduct which :

a. May reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on the protected characteristic of race; and/or

b. undermines the Party’s ability to campaign against racism:

but you provide no reasoning whatsoever as to how these claims may be justified. Curiously the formulation above does not even mention which race or protected characteristic is involved.The remainder of the draft charges just contain extracts from social media posts, some of them my own, but many taken from articles by the well respected journalist Jonathan Cook, to which I had referred.

In your question 4 you ask me: 

“What is your response to the allegation that your conduct may be or have been [sic] in breach of this rule [2.1.8]?”

My answer is: this is a question worthy of Tomás de Torquemada. You cite extracts from social media posts, you cite a Labour Party rule of notorious generality and subjectivity, and you then have the effrontery to ask me to construct my own indictment. You behave as if the Labour Party had been seized by an uneducated totalitarian mafia who seek to overturn 500 years of jurisprudence at a stroke.

The first point to be made is that no argument whatsoever has been presented in the draft charge in favour of the proposition that a violation of rule 2.1.8 has occurred. I note however that in your Question 4 the categorical assertion in the “draft” charge that my conduct has violated rule 2.1.8, has been subtly weakened by the use of the modal operators “may be”/”may have been” to replace the indicative mood. Presumably this is because of the dubious status of the “draft charge” which is after all just a “draft” and so cannot be referred to directly as an allegation without the substitution of such a modal operator. However the use of the modal operator “may be” is quite improper in the present quasi-legal context of the allegation referred to in Q4. This is because in normal semantics the words “may be” merely imply possibility without any level of certainty. No allegation which uses the words “may be” in this way can be considered to be correctly formulated. Such a formulation is inquisitorial in the most egregious sense, since it places the entire burden of proof on the respondent to refute the allegation.

Furthermore I note that Rule 2.1.8 is formulated in highly subjective terms:

“No member of the Party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the party.”

This aspect is important because elementary transparency requires that any allegation that a social media post breaches rule 2.1.8 be accompanied by a full explanation of the reasons why the alleged post may in the opinion of the NEC constitute such a violation. The opinion of the NEC on such matters is determined by a vote which, in the context of the present internecine warfare in the party, is in many cases likely to be far from unanimous, and dependent on transient factors of a political character. I cannot be expected to second guess the probable reasoning of the NEC, nor the current balance of opinion on that body, and it is no more reasonable to request me to do so than it would have been 500 years ago to require me to second guess the reasoning of the Spanish Inquisition.

Your relaying of the complainant’s list of my social media posts together with vague insinuations of antisemitism in the absence of any reasoned argument is therefore either disingenuous on your part or else it is incomplete. There is no reason why you should need my participation in order to decide whether or not, on the basis of the complainant’s assertions, a prima facie breach of rule 2.1.8 has occurred. If a complainant in fact gave an explanation as to how in his or her opinion a particular social media post constituted a breach of rule 2.1.8, then it was your duty to consider the reasoning, decide for yourselves whether or not there was a plausible argument for such a breach, and in the case of an affirmative decision, to communicate that argument to me. If on the other hand the complainant gave no explanation for the claim of a breach of rule 2.1.8, then it was your duty to evaluate, possibly in consultation with the complainant, whether in your opinion a valid argument could be made that such a breach had occurred, and to contact me only if you considered that to be the case.

In short it is up to you to decide whether each of the posts attributed to me by the complainant or complainants constitute a prima facie violation of rule 2.1.8 or not. If you judge that they do indeed constitute a prima facie violation, then, prior to any inquisitorial investigation, natural justice requires that you present the outline of an argument as to why you consider this to be the case. This you have not done. However if you do not believe that there exists any such prima facie case, then you are improperly relaying the unsubstantiated insinuations of the anonymous complainant(s), since absolutely no connection has been proposed, let alone established, between the posts and a manifestation of antisemitism, or any other violation of rule 2.1.8..

It is not my duty to act as an unpaid legal adviser either to you or to the complainant, for the purpose of constructing dubious arguments by which my own alleged actions may be shown to have been in violation of a Labour Party rule.

If you have read and understood the above and you accept my reasoning, I offer you the opportunity to withdraw NOI CN-XXXX and to apologise unconditionally for issuing both this NOI and the previous NOI CN-YYYY. If you do so, I agree to take no legal action in relation to the issuance of these two NOI’s, though I reserve the right to publish this email and to seek discovery of any personal information and communications relating to me which the Labour Party may hold. 

The above offer is time limited and is valid until 31st January 2022. It is made without prejudice to any related legal action which I may decide to take should the offer not be accepted. 

If you do not understand my reasoning above you should refer this email to your supervisor or to a competent authority. 

If you understand my reasoning above but do not accept it, please read the following final section.

A DRAFT ALLEGATION

A draft allegation has been made that you and/or the Labour Party have committed acts relating to Notices of Investigation issued to me which may constitute indirect discrimination related to a protected philosophical belief contrary to section 101(2) EA2010 and/or harassment related to a protected philosophical belief contrary to section 101(4) EA2010. I am therefore conducting a preliminary investigation as to whether there are grounds to take legal action against you. It is important that the draft allegation is properly investigated. I am currently at the investigatory stage of the process and at no time during an investigation do I confer an assumption of guilt on any party.

I therefore request you to answer the following questions in writing within 14 days.

1)*. I have reason to believe that you and/or some other officeholder(s) or employee(s)of the Labour Party is/are responsible for the issuance of NOI’s CN-XXXX and CN-YYYY

Can you confirm this is the case? If so, please identify yourselves.

2)* I further have reason to believe that you and/or the other authors of the above NOI’s shared these NOI’s and the associated draft charges with other persons. Can you confirm this is the case?

If so please identify in each case all persons, whether natural or corporate, with whom each NOI or draft charge was shared.

3)* Taking each item of NOI correspondence which you authored in turn, please explain your reasons for authoring or sharing that item of correspondence.

4)* The Equalities Act 2010 can be found here

What is your response to the draft allegation that your conduct in relation to the two NOI’s may constitute or may have constituted harassment and/or indirect discrimination related to a protected philosophical belief contrary to sections 101(4) and 101(2) of EA 2010?

5)* The recommendation from the Chakrabarti report which the Labour Party has committed to in full include inter alia:

a. There should be time-limits on bringing charges, so limiting backwards trawling through social media.

b. It should be normal for the accused member to be informed promptly of the nature of the charge, and the identity of the complainant.

 c. Until these processes are reviewed and revised there should be a moratorium on the triggering of new disciplinary investigations.

Do you feel the your actions go against these recommendations? If not, explain why not.

6)* The NEC Code of Conduct on Antisemitism states “Any behaviour which undermines .Labour’s ability to campaign against any form of racism, is unacceptable conduct within the Labour Party” 

Do you think that the issuance of disproportionate numbers of NOI’s alleging antisemitism to Jewish members is consistent with this policy? If so, explain why.

7)* Looking back at the NOI correspondence, do you regret your authorship of any of it?

8)* Do you intend to continue to author similar NOI’s again in the future?

9)* Are there any further matters you wish to raise in your defence?

10)* Is there any evidence you wish to submit in your defence?

You may find it helpful to compare the above questions with your own 10 questions to me issued in your latest NOI, which questions I have copied in Appendix 1 below this email for your convenience.

It only remains for me to wish you a Healthy and Happy New Year, and, if you are the General Secretary, an opportunity to spend more time with your family.

Yours Sincerely,

George Wilmers
Dr. G.M.Wilmers

APPENDIX 1

List of 10 questions addressed to Dr.G.M.Wilmers by the anonymous “Investigations Team” of the Labour Party Governance and Legal Unit in NOI CN-XXXX

1) Please see the evidence attached overleaf. The Party has reason to believe that those are your Facebook account. Can you confirm this is the case?

2) The Party further has reason to believe that you posted, shared or endorsed these statements yourself. Can you confirm this is the case? If not, each individual piece of evidence is numbered so please specify which of the pieces of evidence you are disputing posting, sharing or endorsing?

3) Taking each item in turn, please explain your reasons for posting, sharing or endorsing each numbered item of evidence included in this pack?

4) Chapter 2, Clause I.8 of the Labour Party Rule Book provides:

“No member of the Party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the Party. The NEC and NCC shall take account of any codes of conduct currently in force and shall regard any incident which in their view might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on age; disability; gender reassignment or identity; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; or sexual orientation as conduct prejudicial to the Party: these shall include but not be limited to incidents involving racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia or otherwise racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions, sexual harassment, bullying or any form of intimidation towards another person on the basis of a protected characteristic as determined by the NEC, wherever it occurs, as conduct prejudicial to the Party. The disclosure of confidential information relating to the Party or to any other member, unless the disclosure is duly authorised or made pursuant to a legal obligation, shall also be considered conduct prejudicial to the Party.”

What is your response to the allegation that your conduct may be or have been in breach of this rule?

5) The recommendation from the EHRC report which Labour have committed to in full support of a zero tolerance of antisemitism reads:

“Continue to build on its new leadership’s statement regarding its failure to deal with antisemitism, and acknowledge its responsibility for not living up to its commitment to a zero tolerance of antisemitism”. 

Do you feel the contents of Items 1 through 9, goes against this objective?

6) NEC Code of Conduct: Antisemitism states “Any behaviour which undermines Labour’s ability to campaign against any form of racism, Is unacceptable conduct within the Labour Party” 

Do you think your Facebook activities are consistent with this policy?

7) Looking back at the evidence supplied with this letter, do you regret posting any of this content?

8) Do you intend to post, share, or endorse content of this nature again in the future?

9) Are there any further matters you wish to raise in your defence?

10) Is there any evidence you wish to submit in your defence?

APPENDIX 2

Draft Charge [As sent to Dr Wilmers on 13th December 2021 – JVL ed]

1. Dr George Wilmers (the Respondent) has engaged in conduct prejudicial and / or grossly detrimental to the Party in breach of Chapter 2, Clause I.8 of the Labour Party Rule Book by engaging in conduct which:

a. May reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on the protected characteristic of race; and/or
b. undermines the Party’s ability to campaign against racism

i. Item 1 – Facebook post – 02 March 2019 – referring to “the current witch hunt” whilst sharing a link stating “The witchfinders are now ready to burn Corbyn” which included quotes regarding antisemitism and the Labour Party: “In an earlier era, the guilt of women accused of witchcraft was tested through the ducking stool. If a woman drowned, she was innocent; if she survived, she was guilty and burnt at the stake. A foolproof system that created an endless supply of the wicked, justifying the status and salaries of the men charged with hunting down ever more of these diabolical women. And that is the Medieval equivalent of where the British Labour party has arrived, with the suspension of MP Chris Williamson for anti-semitism. Williamson, it should be noted, is widely seen as a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, a democratic socialist who was propelled unexpectedly into the Labour leadership nearly four years ago by its members. His elevation infuriated most of the party’s MPs, who hanker for the return of the New Labour era under Tony Blair, when the party firmly occupied the political centre. Corbyn’s success has also outraged vocal supporters of Israel both in the Labour party – some 80 MPs are stalwart members of Labour Friends of Israel – and in the UK media. Corbyn is the first British party leader in sight of power to prefer the Palestinians’ right to justice over Israel’s continuing oppression of the Palestinians. For these reasons, the Blairite MPs have been trying to oust Corbyn any way they can. First through a failed re-run of the leadership contest and then by assisting the corporate media – which is equally opposed to Corbyn – in smearing him variously as a shambles, a misogynist, a sympathiser with terrorists, a Russian asset, and finally as an “enabler” of anti- semitism. This last accusation has proved the most fruitful after the Israel lobby began to expand the definition of anti-semitism to include not just hatred of Jews but also criticism of Israel. Labour was eventually forced to accept a redefinition, formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that conflates anti-Zionism – opposition to Israel’s violent creation on the Palestinians’ homeland – with anti-semitism.” (Item 1, Page 2, paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9), “Once the mud stuck through repetition, a vocal group of Labour MPs began denouncing the party for being “institutionally anti-semitic”, “endemically anti-semitic” and a “cesspit of anti- semitism”. The slurs continued relentlessly, even as statistics proved the accusation to be groundless. The figures show that anti-semitism exists only in the margins of the party, as racism does in all walks of life. Meanwhile, the smears overshadowed the very provable fact that anti-semitism and other forms of racism are rearing their head dangerously on the political right. But the witchfinders were never interested in the political reality. They wanted a never-ending war – a policy of “zero tolerance” – to root out an evil in their midst, a supposed “hard left” given succour by Corbyn and his acolytes. This is the context for understanding Williamson’s “crime”. Despite the best efforts of our modern witchfinder generals to prove otherwise, Williamson has not been shown to have expressed hatred towards Jews, or even to have made a comment that could be interpreted as anti-semitic. One of the most experienced of the witchfinders, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, indulged familiar McCarthyite tactics yesterday in trying to prove Williamson’s anti-semitism by association. The MP was what Freedland termed a “Jew baiter” because he has associated with people whom the witchfinders decree to be anti-semites.” (Item 1, Page 3, paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4), “As with all inquisitions, however, the witchfinders were not interested in what Williamson actually said, but in the threat he posed to the narrative they have created to destroy their enemy, Corbynism, and reassert their own power. So his words were ripped from their context and presented as proof that he did indeed support witches. He was denounced for saying what he had not: that Labour should not apologise for its anti-semitism. In this dishonest reformulation of Williamson’s statement, the witchfinders claimed to show that he had supported anti-semitism, that he consorted with witches. Second, Williamson compounded his crime by publicly helping just such a readymade witch: a black Jewish woman named Jackie Walker.” (Item 1, Page 4, paragraphs 1, 2, 3, and 4), “The screening was to inform Labour party members of the facts of her case in the run-up to a hearing in which, given the current atmosphere, it is likely she will be expelled. The screening was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Labour, which has also warned repeatedly that anti-semitism is being used malevolently to silence criticism of Israel and weaken Corbyn.” (Page 3, Paragraph 6), “Walker was one of the early victims of the confected claims of an Labour “anti-semitism crisis”. But she was not ready to roll over and accept her status as witch. She fought back.” (Item 1, Page 4, paragraph 9), “And then her story was turned into a documentary film, fittingly called Witch Hunt. It sets out very clearly the machinations of the Blairite wing of MPs, and Labour’s closely allied Israel lobby, in defaming Walker as part of their efforts to regain power over the party. For people so ostensibly concerned about racism towards Jews, these witchfinders show little self-awareness about how obvious their own racism is in relation to some of the “witches” they have hunted down.” (Item 1, Page 4, paragraphs 11 and 12), “But that racism can only be understood if people have the chance to hear from Walker and other victims of the anti-semitism smears. Which is precisely why Williamson, who was trying to organise the screening of Witch Hunt, had to be dealt with too. Walker is not the only prominent black anti-racism activist targeted. Marc Wadsworth, another longtime ally of Corbyn’s, and founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, was “outed” last year in another confected anti-semitism scandal. The allegations of anti-semitism were impossible to stand up publicly, so finally he was booted out on a catch-all claim that he had brought the party “into disrepute”. Jews who criticise Israel and support Corbyn’s solidarity with Palestinians have been picked off by the witchfinders too, cheered on by media commentators who claim this is being done in the service of a “zero tolerance” policy towards racism. As well as Walker, the targets have included Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson. (Item 1, Page 5, paragraphs 1, 2 and 3), But there are a set of very obvious problems with that position, and they have gone entirely unexamined by those promoting the “institutional anti-semitism” and “zero tolerance” narratives. (Item 1, Page 5, paragraph 5), “A fanatically pro-Israel organisation like the Jewish Labour Movement will never tolerate a Corbyn-led Labour party reaching power and supporting the Palestinian cause. To pretend otherwise is simple naivety or deception. That fact was demonstrably proven two years ago in the Al Jazeera undercover documentary The Lobby into covert efforts by Israel and its UK lobbyists to undermine Corbyn from within his own party through groups like the JLM and MPs in Labour Friends of Israel. It was telling that the party machine, along with the corporate media, did its best to keep the documentary out of public view.” (Item 1, Page 5, paragraph 7 and 8), “Stripped bare, what Lansman and the witchfinders are saying is that Zionist Jewish sensitivities in the party are the only ones that count, that anything and everything must be done to indulge them, even if it means abusing non-Zionist Jewish members, black members, Palestinian and Muslim members, and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians. (Item 1, Page 6, paragraph 6) “While the witchfinders claim to have unearthed a “pattern of behaviour” in Williamson’s efforts to expose their smears, in fact the real pattern of behaviour is there for all to see: a concerted McCarthyite campaign to destroy Corbyn before he can reach No 10. Corbyn’s allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Walker and Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters like Williamson and Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.” (Item 1, Page 6, paragraphs 9 and 10)

ii. Item 2 – Facebook post – 14 January 2020 sharing a petition for “Rebecca Long-Bailey to reassess her endorsement of the truly shocking 10 conditions that the reactionary Board of Deputies has sought to impose on the Labour Party.” Alongside the caption “Below is an important petition to Rebecca Long Bailey to reassess her foolish endorsement of the truly shocking 10 conditions which the reactionary Board of Deputies has sought to impose on the Labour Party. Started by prominent Jewish left activists from JVL and others, it has now been signed by more than 1000 comrades and the number is increasing rapidly. The appeal contains a clear and concise demonstration of the outrageous breach of freedom of speech of the BoD’s impertinent and dictatorial demands. Please sign it.”

iii. Item 3 – Facebook post – 12 February 2020 – stating “at least it might show up the probably stitch-up of the EHRC for what it is likely to be.”

iv. Item 4 – Facebook post – 25 November 2020 stating “Keir Starmer’s instrumentalization of the EHRC report to suppress all discussion of the so-called antisemitism crisis and purge the left of the Labour Party” as well as “the EHRC report itself is an extraordinarily shoddy piece of work”

v. Item 5 – Facebook post – 14 December 2020 – stating when referring to Keir Starmer as a “witch-hunter-in chief of supposed antisemites”

vi. Item 6 – Facebook post in a group – 19 January 2021- stating “Since Keir Starmer is known to be a great admirer of the Israeli apartheid regime, it is perhaps not surprising he has recruited a former Israeli spy, Assaf Kaplan, to his office help manage its social media.” Later on, stating “his expertise will surely be invaluable in controlling undesirable elements within the Labour Party.”

vii. Item 7 – Facebook post – 18 May 2021 – stating “Starmer has done more to encourage antisemitism in the UK than anything that even the war crimes of the Israeli state could have achieved on their own.”

viii. Item 8 – Facebook post in a group – 24 September 2021 stating “all Formby did was to speed up and make more efficient the existing witch hunt for “antisemites””

ix. Item 9 – Facebook post in a group – 27 September 2021 stating “the party mafia and the media will ignore the result except to provide them with fuel for a further purge of the left”

[This “draft chage” was then followed by ten question relating to the”evidence” above,  followed by screenshots of all the material quoted above in items 1-9 – JVL ed]