Labour racism report author rejected BBC request to remove criticism of Panorama
JVL Introduction
Richard Sanders with access to the full transcripts of Martin Forde’s recent interview with Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, writes about the whole sorry saga here.
Keir Starmer promised when he personally commissioned the Forde Report, that it would be taken seriously. Instead it has been swept under the carpet.
Discussion of it in the party was banned and the Party has had virtually no contact with Martin Forde since he delivered the report.
Worse still, said Forde, the media gone along with blanking the report. It’s as though it never happened.
We might have expected the Guardian to do better, but it has failed utterly.
Anyone who references the Forde Report in comments posted finds them almost immediately “moderated” i.e. deleted. The reason often given is that it is in breach of ‘point 8 Keep it Relevant’ of their community guidelines. Clearly if the Guardian refuses to mention Forde any comment that does so cannot be relevant to the discussion!
George Orwell might have had something to say about this…
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Thanks to Middle East Eye for permission to repost.
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Thu 16 Mar 2023. Read the original here.
Labour racism report author rejected BBC request to remove criticism of Panorama
Barrister Martin Forde speaks for the first time about his report investigating racism and factionalism in the Labour Party
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The Guardian has reported the interview of Forde conducted by Al Jazeera, but it missed out any mention of his views on the whole antisemitism “saga” including his comments about how JVL should be involved in “training”.
I read somewhere this week that the BBC are claiming that Panorama tried to interview Jewish anti-Zionist supporters of Corbyn, but they all refused. It would be interesting know if this is true and if so what kinds of exchanges they had with the BBC.
The report above leaves out Forde’s suggestion that the email he got from Ware had a tone that was “rather like a letter before action that, you know, I might see in litigation” (Forde’s exact words, if John Ware is reading this). And note that the email from John Ware is “CC’d to the Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons” (https://youtu.be/tiODoWurA64?t=381). That is presumably an attempt to further pressurise Martin Forde.
A conspiracy full of cock-ups surely? Although not even a branch officer, a mere GC delegate, I am both Jewish and sufficiently PERSONALLY well-connected to people pretty high up in the LP (one longstanding, though on and off, on the NEC, with distinguished service on the NCC and before that on the NPF when it actually functioned seriously) and not a dicky-bird of asking me anything….I have been an anti-Zionist since that Topol performance of Fiddler on the Roof in London in the mid-sixties, if not earlier….so “not a real J*w”?
Labour bans NEC members from meeting with Forde (Skwawkbox, Mon 20 Mar 2023.)
An apt epitaph for the current LP leader?
“Sir Keir Starmer: seeker after truth, only to bury it”
I viewed the BBC Panorama broadcast about antisemitism within the Labour Party when Jeremy was our Leader. The Panorama broadcast left me with an impression of its findings being preconceived, highly biased and indeed thoroughly misleading. This is my honest personal opinion of it.
I sense that the establishment controlling the Labour Party and the news media is attempting to stifle honest impressions recorded in the Forde Report
Afterthought: It just occurred to me that the reason they didn’t do the obvious and have several people from JVL participate in the programme is because it would have stuck out a mile if THEY had captions (saying who they were) – and Ware interviewing them (which they couldn’t very well have NOT done), and the OTHERS not be named and interviewed. I mean they couldn’t very well have used the same ‘device’ for anyone refuting the A/S claims as they did for those making them, could they!
And just one other point that just this moment occurred to me: Just about everyone watching the programme would surely have thought that Izzy Lenga was referring to meetings of her local CLP re the A/S abuse she claimed she was subjected to, INCLUDING members of her CLP (most of whom surely watched the programme), and yet her CLP didn’t post any denial/refutation of her claims on their twitter or facebook page, which I checked at the time (a few weeks later, that is) and, as such, was totally mystified that they hadn’t. But then given the BBC ‘update’ recently…….
Hmmmmm
I was confused by this:
‘It was highly critical of the Labour bureaucracy, which was controlled by the right wing of the party for much of Corbyn’s period as leader, and was largely dismissed in the British media as an exercise in factional self-justification by Corbynite staffers.
‘Forde rejects this. “I do feel they’ve been unfairly maligned. I think that they were doing their absolute conscientious best,” he said.’
What is it that Forde rejects? The criticism of the Labour bureaucracy in the leaked report, or the dismissal of the report as an exercise in factional self-justification?
Who is it that Forde believes “were doing their absolute conscientious best”, the Labour bureaucracy or Corbynite staffers?