“Labour Files” – Where are the rebuttals from those responsible for the attacks?
JVL Introduction
The Morning Star asked JVL to write about the Al Jazeera revelations in Al Jazeera’s Labour Files”. Co-chair Leah Levane was pleased to oblige for one of the few media outlets that has shown any interest – astonishing, especially when you consider the coverage of every allegation or mis-step made by Corbyn or any of his supporters. The testimony shows how deeply many were affected; the harrowing Episode 3 focuses on the hierarchy of racism echoing the findings of the Forde Report.
Levane asks “If the revelations are false, where are the rebuttals and demands for correction? If, however, they are true, why is there no investigation within the Labour Party and why is the mainstream media not demanding it?” Finally, why should voters trust a Party that treats its own volunteers so shoddily?
This article was originally published by The Morning Star on Sat 15 Oct 2022. Read the original here.
The Labour Files: where is the outrage, where is the action?
LEAH LEVANE looks at the shocking revelations from a recent investigation into the anti-Corbyn conspiracy and asks if Labour cannot act on this now, how can it be trusted by its members in future?
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Yes
Surely this is the moment for Starmer and his gang to re-admit all the left wingers who have been unjustly expelled. Labour is riding high in the polls; the Tories are at rock bottom. It will be barely noticed while the Tories fight it out and self-destruct. It will strengthen the Labour Party and bring members back.
If Starmer carries on regardless, all the true socialists will haunt Starmer; the Tories and the media will use the ammunition that they have secretly stockpiled to use against a Labour government – the false accusations, the racism, the injustices – and any resistance to Starmer’s Labour McCarthyism will then get publicity.
Of course we can’t help preferring even a right wing Labour Government to a Tory Government but I could not bring myself as yet to vote for such unprincipled, lying, rogues. However, if there is the hope and potential of a good representation of socialists in the Labour Party, I might be able to vote Labour.
They could start by reinstating Maurice McLeod in Camberwell and Peckham – and Jeremy of course.
Ekua Bayunu said, “There is a point at which people involved in this have stopped regarding people of African heritage as human and I don’t know how you find your way back from that.” This system is the nub of the problem, practised by colonisers, usurpers, conquerors and land grabbers throughout history, taken to new heights in the twentieth century and no doubt will be developed further during our modern age. Under Jeremy Corbyn one had trust that at the very least GB could have taken a lead to acknowledge the wrongs of history, the LP under Keir Starmer is showing no understanding of this problem rather it seems to be extending the system to the disadvantage of all.
My heart is so heavy I fear it will sink like a stone in a glass of air. Starmer has carte blanche now, and what will he do? Absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. This man has the opportunity to bring the party together but he is intent on shredding it.
David Aldred
Hear Hear for that exactly how I feel.
The call for a general election and the election of a Labour government to replace this discredited Tory regime is to be supported, but with the clear understanding that the Starmer crew are thoroughly invested in saving capitalism. They differ from the Conservative Party as to how best to achieve that goal. It matters not which of these two parties occupy the reins of office, at the end of the day it is the “markets” of speculators, hedge fund managers and bankers who call the tune and it’s the Labour Party right-wing in parliament and the Party’s full time officials who are their loyal and obedient servants, whose main interests are lining their own pockets in pursuit of life peerages and promotion to lucrative governmental positions in offices of state, and the dangling of minor, piddling reforms before voters is part of that political scam.
Anything, or anybody, whether Jeremy Corbyn or supporters of JVL, who stand in the way of the aristocracy of labour, as epitomised by “Sir” Kier Starmer and his crew of political backstabbers, cheered on by the supporters of the neo-fascist wing of Zionism, will be subjected to the vilest of lies to the glee of the gutter press.
Regrettably many Labour voters still live in hope that Starmer & co will turn out differently to the Boris Johnson/Liz Truss shower but those of us who once shared those same delusions back in our youth many decades ago had those illusions shattered by our experiences of the downright lies, obstruction & political shenigans engaged in by Labour’s right-wing during the course of our Party membership.
Political leopards rarely change their political spots, thus if the working class have to undergo having their eyes opened to the true political nature of the careerist and time servers presently in charge of the Labour Party, so be it. Labour in office will be an important part of that education.
And the MSM are suddenly focussing on Al Jazeera’s sexist harrassment of its own staff, but, er, nothing about anything else….
If you don’t click on the link to the article provided here, and try to find it from the Morning Star’s homepage instead, it’s pretty much buried.
Of all the media outlets where you’d think the matter warranted an editorial or a prominent feature from the outset, it would be the Morning Star.
It’s great that, weeks later, they’ve reached out to someone else and found a bit of space to host an opinion piece but this itself illustrates the current state of play.
Rather than spending another hundred years protesting the latest iteration of disinformation tactics extending back to the Zinoviev Letter, better use would be made of our energies, hitherto wasted on battling obstruction in our own party, to try starting something else from scratch ..Or align with a 21st century movement like the Progressive International.
I’d say Starmer’s likely to have a rocky road as PM. His lack of positive support might will make him much more vulnerable to peer pressure than he has been hitherto.
Starmer’s chances of becoming PM rests largely on the public’s fairly recent view that Labour can’t possibly be worse than the Tories have proved themselves to be. Within the Labour party in and outside Westminster, there’s little personal liking or respect for Starmer, his allies or the wealthy donors influencing his decisions. If Starmer’s iron grip on the levers of party power fails him – even temporarily – he’ll be hung out to dry.
Any PM taking over the Tory mess will struggle to get their policies through and will fail horrifically on occasions. When someone like Starmer is temporarily vulnerable, all those he’s outraged in the past will ask whether now is the right time to clobber him. Just like Truss he may then have to do deals with political opponents to survive.
‘Where are the rebuttals from those responsible for the attacks?’
Leah is of course making a point, but given the more-or-less total blanket silence of the MSM, then apart from those of us on the left – ie those who have been the target of the fraudulent attacks during the past nearly seven years – and the right, next to no-one is aware that the Al Jazeera documentaries exist, so there’s no need for anyone to refute anything. And I think we can safely assume that if any MSM outlets HAD covered them, they would have done so in much the same vein as the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News did – ie discredit them every-which-way they can think of.
And the reason the MSM have completely blanked the documentaries and the revelations is of course because THEY conspired in ‘broadcasting’ the lies and falsehoods to millions of people so as to smear and demonise Jeremy and the left, and they are hardly going to start revealing evidence – THE evidence – that shows and proves it was all a massive smear campaign, and a massive smear campaign that they gave legitimacy to, and played a part in reinforcing.
The MSM not only gave the totally corrupt fascist anti-democratic saboteurs/dark forces a voice – and a VERY loud voice – but in large part added their OWN voice to the lies and falsehoods and character assassination of Jeremy the left as well – ie deceived and duped the very people who pay their large wages – and whose objective was to subvert democracy by doing so.
Leah Levane writes very well on this important issue that has been ignored by most of the media.
There is one small point where Leah repeats an inaccuracy. She refers to the incident at Hackney North CLP where Ghada Karmi was prevented from speaking and wrote: “Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian activist, expelled from her Jerusalem home as a child in 1948, was stopped from speaking at a CLP about her own experiences as a Palestinian.”
This simply isn’t true. We would have been delighted if Ghada had spoken about her personal experiences as a Palestinian or about the experiences of the Palestinian people. Instead Ghada announced that she didn’t intend to talk about the situation in Palestine but she wanted to talk about the treatment of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left by the Starmer/Evans leadership. This was dangerous for us as we had instructions from the Party General Secretary not to discuss these issues at our meetings. It was only then that she was shut down. Ghada is a fine comrade who has done sterling work for the Palestinian cause but on this issue she is in error.
Overall, this is an excellent article. Thanks for all the important work you and the JVL comrades are doing.
The following is from a recent article by Craig Murray:
I am not aware that it is possible to be too right wing for Keir Starmer’s New Labour. I know personally a number of people who have been kicked out for being too left wing.
….. take the case of John McTernan. This is from the famous Leaked Report on the Labour Party:
“John McTernan, meanwhile, formerly involved in New Labour and a delegate to 2016 party conference, was repeatedly reported from 25 July onwards for abusive language on Twitter and elsewhere, including describing Labour MPs who nominated Corbyn as “morons”; tweeting twice that Corbyn was a “traitor”; describing “Corbynistas” as racist; telling an SNP MP that he should “Come down to Peckham and try saying that, mate”; calling Corbyn a “Putin-hugging, terrorist-loving, Trident-hater”; and writing in the Daily Telegraph that all of Corbyn’s supporters were “online trolls”.”
“No action was taken, and McTernan received the staff decision “No action – removed at referral”. On 18 August, however, Dan Hogan did report a member of McTernan’s CLP, Omar Baggili, who – in response to an article by McTernan in “The Telegraph” urging the Conservative government to “crush the rail unions once and for all” – tweeted at him “seriously John why haven’t you got yourself a Tory membership card. They’re anti unions & pro privatisation like you.” Baggili was suspended for “abuse”.””
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/10/the-great-crossing/
Says it all doesn’t it!
I just did a search and found the article (albeit behind a paywall), posted on August 10th, 2016:
‘The Tories should crush the rail unions once and for all – voters would thank them for it’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/10/the-tories-should-crush-the-rail-unions-once-and-for-all–voters/
Yes! Why aren’t the MSM saying anything? Aren’t black and brown members of the Labour Party suffering enough discrimination, sexism and racism? Aren’t the party’s Anti-Zionist Jews being oppressed enough under Starmer’s Leadership? Aren’t its Palestinian members being silenced enough? Isn’t the mass expulsion of socialists yet great enough?
Whose side are they on!
To all those BBC and Guardian journalists keeping schtum on the Al Jazeera Labour Files – Censorship or self-censorship doesn’t just disappear a politically sensitive topic but leaves the rest of what you have to say sounding hollow and dead on the page.
After the event commentary isn’t journalism but social abandonment. Without taking systemic racism seriously, dutifully informing the public of black men dying one by one at the hands of the British police isn’t journalism, it’s shaming. All the years, also, of dutiful reportage on the Palestine-Israel “conflict” (scenes of culminating, “high drama”) whilst leaving grotesquely under-reported the routine destruction of Palestinian homes; the deaths, imprisonment and suffering of a people trapped under Israel’s rule – is shaming.
So here we are, in the UK, with many a working class Labour member (disproportionately? Black, Asian and Muslim) being blocked from progression in the Party, if not already expelled or indefinitely suspended by its NEC.
Will the MSM really keep silent while Keir Starmer continues to “unify” Labour by expunging any and all political difference from what looks to be the next Party of Government? Are British journalists really prepared to collude in withdrawing the legitimacy of non-compliant voices from working class, Black and Asian communities? Or will they show solidarity and finally run some commentary on the Labour Files? So that come election time people are able to make an informed choice of who to vote for, and why. Not have that decision made for us beforehand by a patronizing political class that thinks it knows best despite all evidence to the contrary!
“This matters beyond the internal workings of the Labour Party, a party that, thanks to the implosion of the Tories, is likely to be the next government”. Well said, Leah Levane.
I just watched an illuminating discussion of the Labour Files between its director Richard Saunders and Palestinian Deep Dive’s Ahmed Alnaouq.
https://youtu.be/-GtN5GwgcQs
A vitally important point raised in that discussion was the fact that throughout the handling of the issue of antisemitism in Labour the Palestinian perspective was almost entirely missing. Unfortunately Corbyn himself, as well as those around him, contributed to this myopic approach by allowing the single focus to be on antisemitism and its effect on the Jewish community. As a result the key context of the Palestinian experience of Zionism was wholly removed from the debate, as if it had played no part in shaping the attitudes towards Israel and Zionism that supporters of Israel complained of. This goes a long way towards explaining why the Labour defense against the charges laid against it was so ineffective. This suppression of Palestinian voices, which continues to this day, is why so many people have no difficulty in accepting that the Labour left was and remains institutionally antisemitic. Of all the mistakes made in the handling of this issue, this seems to me to be the most egregious. I don’t say that arguing the Palestinian case would have changed the eventual outcome, but it would at least have kept the argument alive and helped people to realize that the issue is a good deal more complicated than has been claimed.