Institutional racism? The case of the Labour party
JVL Introduction
Is the Labour party institutionally antisemitic, as the JLM insisted when demanding an EHRC investigation?
This analysis – an extended Twitter thread on 22nd January this year, brought recently to our attention – makes it clear that the EHRC did not draw any conclusion about institutional racism of any kind as the Commission was simply not tasked with looking at it. It is not a concept that appears in the Equalities Act 2010 that set up the EHRC.
The concept derives, rather, from the MacPherson Report and the author goes back to apply its analysis of institutional racism to the Labour Party.
The author finds that the Party guilty of failing to implement the recommendations of the MacPherson Report to record complaints of racism for 20+ years – but guilty under Blair, Brown and Miliband and while Iain McNicol was General Secretary.
It was only after the appointment of Jennie Formby as General Secretary that Labour at last began to move on this issue: “The Labour Party was Institutionally Racist before Corbyn took over as leader, more progress was made to reverse that under Corbyn than any other leader ”
So Corbyn, rather than being the guilty party, was the first leader to take the issue seriously and to begin to deal with it.
This article was originally published by Twitter on Sat 22 Jan 2022. Read the original here.
The EHRC report, Labour, Institutional Racism & Institutional anti-Semitism
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As usual those of us who refute the allegations of “antisemitism” in the Labour Party are excreting too much effort. This article seems to allege that there has always been a issue with antisemitism in the Labour Party and that only the noble Corbyn took this seriously.
This is as much a fiction as the allegation that Corbyn is. was. or ever has been remotely antisemitic. Anyone who fails to recognize this indisputable fact may still have a faith in Santa Claus.
Corbyn did NOT recognize that there was antisemitism in Labour because there never was or ever has been any more “antisemitism” in Labour than in the rest of the British and anyone who thinks otherwise should use the internet rather than believe in the Sun or board of deputies.
“….do not confuse me with facts as my mind is made up.” Said Humpty-Dumpty to Jeremy C.
The MacPherson Report was published by a Gov’t in reation to MSM coverage of the brutal murder of Stephen Lawrence to be seen to be doing something. One of the recommendations of defining a complaint about ‘hate crimes’ was to record any incident as a race hate crime if the alledged victim believes that it is. Strange logic guaranteed to increase numbers of hate crime incidents.
The Labour Party Establishment is institutionally worse than useless in understanding or combating the worst racism which afflicts the most victims. The again dominant Labour Establishment contributes to the worst racism.
I agree with Jay. Surely we’ve been round the houses on this. The EHRC report was as much confected nonsense as the oxymoronic idea that there are socialist racists.
This isn’t to say that Labour does not have a racism problem, primarily a reflection of antagonism to black and Asian people – but it’s mainly societal not institutional as the party offers varied experience according to location.
Very interesting thread, which could be improved by better editing and presentation as a properly formatted article- making the (at times) disjointed argument clearer- as in the confusing poorly articulated sentence:
“ The leaked Labour Report demonstrates HQ was institutionally racist, it clearly states it disproves the idea anti-Semitism wasn’t a problem in the party or it was a ‘smear’ or ‘witch-hunt’”.