Livingstone, Bromley win first stage of legal fight vs ‘arguably unlawful’ EHRC
JVL Introduction
Pam Bromley and Ken Livingstone have won the right to a judicial review of the EHRC’s findings of harassment against them in the EHRC report on Antisemitism and the Labour Party in October 2020.
The finding that Bromley and Livingstone had ‘contributed’ to alleged ‘unlawful harassment related to Jewish race and religion’ by the Labour Party was almost the only substantial finding in the report of any actual discrimination.
The Court has accepted that it is arguable those findings breach the right to freedom of expression protected by Article 10 of the European Court on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. There will now be a full Court hearing to decide if those breaches should be upheld and parts of the Report should be struck down.
The case has important ramifications for hundreds of thousands of elected reps up and down the country, who may otherwise not be allowed by Party bosses to open their mouths in case their thoughts and opinions are misconstrued as Party policy.
This article was originally published by Skwawkbox on Mon 18 Oct 2021. Read the original here.
Breaking: Livingstone, Bromley win first stage of legal fight vs ‘arguably unlawful’ EHRC
Court approves legal challenge against EHRC report on ‘Labour antisemitism’
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Desperate to validate the hysterical bellowing of the Labour right and the concerted forces of the traditional media and the main Jewish publications that the party under Corbyn encouraged or harbored antisemitism, the EHRC selected these two flimsy cases as the nearest examples they could find of hatred for the Jewish people as distinct from opposition to Zionism. Knowing how weak their argument was, they arranged for Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian – one of the main proponents of the claim that Labour members were ‘spewing’ anti-Jewish hate on a regular basis – to report the comment of one of the report’s authors that the few cases examined were the tip of the iceberg, and that their true findings were that the situation was actually much, much worse. Those of us who were members of the party during the years in question, were puzzled (and offended) by these findings, which didn’t at all comport with their own experience, but their voices were drowned out by the cries of glee emanating from those who had publicized this smear in the first place. Unfortunately the message coming from the new Labour leader added to the near universal clamor for Corbyn’s head. His removal of the whip from Corbyn for the ‘offense’ of pointing out that the incidence of antisemitism in Labour had been exaggerated for factional purposes was intended as the final proof that two plus two made five. In fact that ‘proof’ looks more and more shaky as time goes on, as witness the fact that Corbyn is now more popular in the party than the man who has tried to erase him.
Like many socialists, I would be overjoyed if Livingstone and Bromley ended up winning their case against the EHRC, as they so clearly deserve to. Nonetheless, no-one should expect that those who smeared the party so viciously and to such malign effect will report such a verdict as a victory for the petitioners and a vindication of the party under Corbyn’s leadership. Going by past form they will probably bury the verdict in some dark and rarely visited corner of their output, and go back to spreading their bare-faced lies as usual.
“it’s about making sure that the EHRC’s dubious legal analysis isn’t used in future to crush people who dare to speak up for Palestinians.”
This is so true.
The judgement by the EHRC was so obviously flawed it shows that it wasn’t just an honest error of judgement, it was out and out bias against Ken and Pam in an attempt to stifle justified criticism of Israel.
This is good news, leading on to further good news, I hope. I am supporting our comrades, Pam and Ken, with their legal expenses, via the crowdfunding.
Pam and Ken deserve our full support, though I am not counting my chickens. Having launched a judicial review against IPSO, I know one can win the first round as they have done, only to meet an ill-disposed judge in the final hearing. https://www.freeexpressionforall.org/articles/letter-to-supporters
An interesting case ~ Let’s hope they are successful against absurd and obvious injustice against them. One has a sense in these kind of accusatorial battles there are ne’er-do-wells out there who make it profitable to themselves if not others of their kind to berate and cajole and bully and steadfastly grind-down those they disapprove of in public, political or any other life as appears, by all accounts, to have been profited against Pamela Bromley and Kenneth Livingstone.
What a relief — but nobody has mentioned that so many people on ‘our side’ were happy to endorse the EHRC’s report in full because it did exonerate most of the party while under Corbyn’s leadership, but it also threw Livingstone under the bus. I’ve been wondering for years what it can possibly be like for a politician of his achievements to go down in history at the last minute as an antisemite. We can now hope that won’t happen. I always remember his sponsoring Simcha in the Square, and Livingstone is the reason there’s a Menorah there every winter along with the Xmas tree. I have also supported Pam’s case from the start.
Well done comrades – it was always ridiculous to accuse Ken of anti-Semitism when he has probably done more to oppose racism , misogyny, homophobia and discrimination than any other single politician in London. The accusers should now consider their positions and resign! C
I have popped a few quid into their Crowd Funder as this needs to be fought!! Solidarity!!
As far as I can ascertain, this hasn’t received any coverage at all in the MSM. And it would appear from the search I just did regarding this development, that it actually received very little coverage – if any at all – in the MSM in the first place – ie when Pam and Ken embarked on this course of action back in January.
In the event that Pam and Ken win the case – which if justice is done they will – it will be very interesting to see how the totally corrupt MSM ‘manage’ it. Could they just completely blank it? Well the fact that they have blanked the case so far is probably a good indication!
If it wasn’t for outlets such as Skwawkbox and the good work of JVL, how would we even know about this?
I look in vain for any coverage of this ruling elsewhere – even in newspapers that were once obsessed with the minutiae of Labour Party activity and disputes.
It’s almost as if they don’t want to hear stories like this that tend to contradict their entrenched positions, so they don’t want us to hear about them either.
Would be interested to hear JVL view on the EHRC’s use of the phrase ‘Jewish race’ which strikes me as a lamentable error and one which, ironically, feeds directly into genuinely antisemitic tropes such as those with which the NSDAP became obsessed.
The correct statement is surely that of the UN Declaration ( 1948 ? ) that our species is unitary and contains no separate ‘races’ within it.
fao Nick J …The UK mainstream media’s failure to cover “left” news properly or at all is a major problem as we all know. As the “censorship” is likely to continue, how to mitigate against it?
– Corbyn’s “News Clubs” initiative may help. Does anyone know how far this initiative has got please? It’s something I greatly approve of but haven’t found time to support … I fear many other sympathisers may react in much the same way.
– Setting up a kind of “Reuters press agency for left-wingers” (linked to the News Clubs?) to get relevant stories / press releases out to the very small left-wing newsletters and Facebook groups wanting to disseminate them may help. The same agency could simultaneously mail out the same info to non-UK media who might be more likely than the UK mainstream to publish it. It’s possible that a UK story published first in Paris and Stuttgart could then be re-published in the UK by this “back door” route.
– otherwise we’re back to ensuring sympathetic Facebook friends and contacts are alerted to the same stories that interest us.
When the Communist Party ruled the USSR, dissident literature / news managed to reach at least part of the population through the Samizdat underground newsletters. Surely we can do at least as well as the Russian dissidents did in getting out newsworthy information to interested readers?
It just occurred to me to do a search to ascertain if the MSM – to some degree or other – covered the fact that John Ware didn’t, in the end, pursue legal action against Jeremy Corbyn, and there was absolutely zilch.
I very much doubt that he actually ever intended to, but he knew of course that if he said he was intending to it would be all over the MSM, just as it was.
That said, Ware DIDN’T announce that he was actually going to sue Jeremy, but that he was considering it, but most of the MSM had it that he was going to. Here are several examples:
Jeremy Corbyn facing legal action by Labour anti-Semitism whistleblowers and journalist…
Seven former party staff members and journalist John Ware are bringing a case against the former opposition leader….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8549731/Jeremy-Corbyn-facing-legal-action-Labour-anti-Semitism-whistleblowers-libel-deal-criticism.html
Jeremy Corbyn being sued after comments on Labour anti-Semitism damages settlement
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-07-22/labour-agrees-substantial-damages-to-anti-semitism-investigation-whistleblowers
Jeremy Corbyn faces legal action over Labour antisemitism scandal as Keir Starmer declares party to be ‘under new management’
Panorama presenter starts court case – after ex-Labour leader denounces High Court damages paid to whistleblowers
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-labour-party-keir-starmer-damages-whistleblower-a9633086.html
But THIS is what Ware actually said:
“I am advised that is defamatory, I am advised that I could continue with this (legal action) against Mr Corbyn personally.
“I am thinking about that. I don’t particularly wish to continue litigating against members of the Labour Party but there’s a principle at stake here.
“I’ll think about that carefully.”
https://news.sky.com/story/jeremy-corbyn-could-face-legal-action-after-criticising-labour-antisemitism-apology-12034070
From the extracts quoted in the EHRC report I am not entirely comfortable with some of the comments made by Pam Bromley. However, there is a big gap between ‘not entirely comfortable’ and ‘unlawful harassment’ and this is where freedom of expression is crucial. If the principle of free speech applies only to speech which is wholly innocuous and inoffensive it is not a lot of use.
The MSM also completely blanked each and every one of the libel cases against the Jewish Chronicle. And for the obvious reason.
It just occurred to me re my 08.33 post that should Pam and Ken LOSE their legal fight, the MSM will probably cover it (whereas if they win it, they most likely WON’T cover it).
Another example of Omission by the MSM is when Margaret Hodge submitted some 200 cases of alleged A/S by party members to the Labour Party involving 111 people, which the MSM dutifully reported of course, but when it transpired shortly afterwards that only 20 of them were LP members, the MSM suppressed the fact. I mean you’d think that any editors and journalists worthy of the name would have been asking how it was possible that MH could have concluded that 91 people who WEREN’T LP members WERE LP members, but then why would they want to bother their readers etc with such trivial details.
Anyway, I was just on the LPs website and came across the following:
NEC Disciplinary Statistics
The Labour Party
June 2021
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/June-2021-Disputes-Report.pdf
Kuhnberg: “the EHRC selected these two flimsy cases as the nearest examples they could find of hatred for the Jewish people as distinct from opposition to Zionism. Knowing how weak their argument was, they arranged for Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian – one of the main proponents of the claim that Labour members were ‘spewing’ anti-Jewish hate on a regular basis – to report the comment of one of the report’s authors that the few cases examined were the tip of the iceberg, and that their true findings were that the situation was actually much, much worse. ”
_________________________________________________
That’s very interesting. I would be very interested to see the evidence that the EHRC contacted Jonathan Freedland in this way. Can you post some links?
Re my 22.25 post on the 19th, I suppose the problem for the MSM in reporting that Ware isn’t pursuing his case against JC, is that readers etc would naturally expect to be told why he decided not to – ie to hear his reason for not doing so – and he could hardly say that his legal advice was that he would more-than-likely lose the case, which is the most likely explanation.
I know that one or two posters have put it down to how much money was raised in the crowdfunder, but I don’t think that was a factor. Why would it be. If Ware’s legal advice had been that he would more-than-likely win the case, I have no doubt that he would have pursued it. But as I said before, I doubt he ever intended to, and probably didn’t even need legal advice to figure out there was no way he would win such a case.
To James Dickins
Freedland wrote both in the Guardian and the NY Review of Books. The NYRB piece can be found at
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/11/03/to-labours-anti-semitism-saga-a-bitter-denouement/
Here is the relevant quote:
‘Even so, the report makes clear that the cases of harassment of Jews it cites represent merely “the tip of the iceberg.” The day after publication, I spoke with EHRC executive director Alastair Pringle, who told me that he and his fellow commissioners had been appalled by the cases they had seen: “There were hundreds of them and they were absolutely atrocious: the language, the behavior, it was shocking. The words used to describe Jewish people: we found it quite shocking.”’
Whether the EHRC contacted JF or he them, it’s clear that they were in close contact. Backdoor briefing in plain sight, at least in my opinion.
To Kuhnberg
Thank you for the link to https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/11/03/to-labours-anti-semitism-saga-a-bitter-denouement/ and your comment: “Even so, the report makes clear that the cases of harassment of Jews it cites represent merely “the tip of the iceberg.” The day after publication, I spoke with EHRC executive director Alastair Pringle, who told me that he and his fellow commissioners had been appalled by the cases they had seen: “There were hundreds of them and they were absolutely atrocious: the language, the behavior, it was shocking. The words used to describe Jewish people: we found it quite shocking.”
____________________________________________________________
The relevant bit in the EHRC summary is: “Two individuals [Ken Livingstone and Pat Bromley] are identified whose antisemitic conduct the Labour Party is responsible for, resulting in a finding of unlawful harassment. Their conduct included using antisemitic tropes and suggesting that complaints of antisemitism were fake or smears. […] In each case, the EHRC considered the perception of those affected by the conduct, and Labour Party members told the EHRC that the comments contributed to a hostile environment for Jewish and non-Jewish members. These cases were only the tip of the iceberg. A further 18 ‘borderline’ cases were found where there was not enough evidence to conclude that the Labour Party was legally responsible for the conduct of the individual. These were people such as local councillors, local election candidates and Constituency Labour Party office holders. Many more files contained evidence of antisemitic conduct by an ‘ordinary’ member of the Labour Party, who did not hold any office or role and the Labour Party cannot be held directly responsible for under the Equality Act 2010”: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/investigation-antisemitism-labour-party-finds-unlawful-acts-discrimination-and
The report itself says “We carried out in-depth analysis of a sample of 70 complaint investigation files. We selected 58 of these files out of over 220 complaints identified in different sources. The remaining 12 were put forward by the Labour Party”: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/investigation-into-antisemitism-in-the-labour-party.pdf
The report doesn’t, as far as I can see, say why, or how, it chose the 70 complaints – so it may be that these were the only complaints which had only a degree of plausibility. The report seems to be making the demonstrably false claim that no complaints of antisemitism have been fakes or smears, since the claimed unlawful harassment by Livingstone and Bromley, included “suggesting that complaints of antisemitism were fake or smears” (presumably Livingstone and Bromley never claimed that ALL such complaints were fake or smears).
Did the EHRC report any of these cases to the police, given that racism/anti-semitism is a criminal offence? Did the individuals (or groups) who reported the alleged incidents of A/S to the LP, or directly to the EHRC during the course of their alleged investigation, report any of them to the police in the first place, for that matter? Surely if, as James Dickens says, Alastair Pringle told him in respect of the A/S cases he/they looked at that: “There were hundreds of them and they were absolutely atrocious: the language, the behavior, it was shocking. The words used to describe Jewish people: we found it quite shocking”, then it seems inconceivable to me that none of the people concerned were reported to the police by either those MAKING the complaints, or the EHRC itself. Doesn’t add up of course or make any sense whatsoever, because surely IF ‘they’ had reported such “atrocious” cases to the police, the people concerned would have been charged and found guilty, and the MSM and the Jewish newspapers would of course have reported on them.
Perhaps you could give Mr Pringle another call James and ask him how many of the “atrocious” cases were reported to the police, and then get back to us and let us know what he said. Thanks
Then there were the 25,000 alleged incidents of abuse claimed by Ruth Smeeth, 20,000 of them in the space of twelve hours supposedly.
The thing is that if you are going to fabricate a Big Lie and, as such, settle on the preposterous and TOTT figure of 25,000 (abusive comments), then you are of course ‘obliged’ to say that most of them were posted in a very short period of time, the point being that if you said you’d received 25,000 abusive messages during the course of the past couple of months, it wouldn’t make sense to any astute reader etc that you waited until it got to 25,000 before saying anything about it to the MSM.
Needless to say, in the Real World, by the time you’d received even several hundred abusive messages – and DEFINITELY beyond ANY shadow of doubt by the time you’d received five hundred – you would be on to the MSM and, as such, it would be headline news. I just this minute found a Sky News article dated September 2nd, 2016, in which it says the following:
Ms Smeeth said the abusive messages started to appear in June, shortly after she left a meeting launching a report by her party into anti-Semitism [on June 30th].
She said: “Since the end of June I’ve received somewhere in the region of 25,000 pieces of abuse. I got 20,000 pieces of abuse within 12 hours, and once it starts on social media it keeps going.”
Note that she DOESN’T say that she received the 20,000 abusive messages in the twelve hour period after she left the meeting, and as of the ‘incident’ with Marc Wadsworth hitting the headlines, which one would have thought would be the most likely period in which she would have received the bulk of the alleged abusive messages. But the reason she COULDN’T say that is because it would seem absurd and highly suspicious to many people that she didn’t say so at the time and, as such, convey it to the MSM, which you would have of course. Bear in mind the date of the article, as with the rest of the MSM!
PS Apologies for the length…….
Apologies, yet again, but shortly after I posted my last comment I happened to read a wikipedia entry about Ruth Smeeth in which it says the following:
Smeeth said that she received 25,000 pieces of abuse during July and August, including 20,000 in the 12-hour period immediately following the incident.[23][24] (with Marc Wadsworth]
The interesting thing is that in none of the related articles I’ve read so far is it mentioned that the 20,000 pieces of abuse happened in the twelve hour period immediately following the incident at the meeting. and what is ALSO interesting is that in the two articles then referenced for said information in the wikipedia entry – ie a Telegraph article and a Guardian article, both dated the 2nd of September – the Telegraph article DOESN’T mention when this ‘twelve hour period’ happened, but the Guardian article DOES! Here’s what it says:
She said 20,000 pieces of abuse arrived within 12 hours of the launch event but another 5,000 came in the subsequent weeks.
“Most of it was on social media, most of it on Twitter, a great deal on Facebook, and then calls to my office and emails,” she said.
Yeah, right, as if anyone on this planet would wait for two months before telling the MSM that they received 20,000 abusive messages in the twelve hour period following the meeting (as of the incident with Marc Wadsworth hitting the headlines, that is)! Oh, right, and it’s just purely coincidental of course that Ruth Smeeth thought to share such information with the MSM just three weeks before the leadership election concluded!
How very, very thoughtful!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Smeeth#Parliamentary_career
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/02/jewish-labour-mp-corbyn-must-name-and-shame-online-abusers
To James Dickins
Thanks for researching this. My point, which needs reiterating, is that the EHRC were clearly aware that the two ‘offences’ itemised in their report – the only ones it was possible for them to include as being the responsibility of individuals acting in some sort of official capacity – did not make a strong enough case for them to find the Labour Party guilty of being institutionally antisemitic – a finding they couldn’t and didn’t ultimately reach. And because the case against Ken and Pam was so flimsy, even those two ‘offences’ were open to question. On the face of it, in consequence, the EHRC had failed in their object, which had clearly been to tarnish Corbyn’s leadership for the rest of time. Knowing this, they made certain that a rider was added to their findings suggesting that the situation was far worse than they were legally allowed to state. And to make certain this rider carried the intended weight, Alistair Pringle, one of the report’s authors, briefed Freedland privately with the statement he duly and dutifully reported. To my mind this behaviour was dishonest and underhand, in that it was designed to smear Labour under Corbyn’s leadership with unspeakable crimes without having to provide any evidence or name any names – offending, in other words, against a fundamental principle of justice.
Low, shabby behaviour, which needs to be called out. But will it be? Starmer has accepted and promoted the smear as inconvertible truth, and removed the whip from Corbyn for the ‘crime’ of questioning some of the weight accorded to the report. As for Pam and Ken’s first-stage victory over the EHRC, a few days ago I attempted to post a factual summary of this in the comments section of the Guardian’s Politics Live website. The moderators pounced on it immediately and consigned it to the site’s very considerable memory hole as something that people are not entitled to know. That is the state of the so-called liberal media in 2021.
Kuhnberg “As for Pam and Ken’s first-stage victory over the EHRC, a few days ago I attempted to post a factual summary of this in the comments section of the Guardian’s Politics Live website. The moderators pounced on it immediately and consigned it to the site’s very considerable memory hole as something that people are not entitled to know. That is the state of the so-called liberal media in 2021.”
____________________________________________________
Yep, that’s how it is at the Guardian. For an elegant demolition of what the Guardian means by ‘antisemitism’, see Nathan J. Robinson ‘How the Media Cracks down on Critics of Israel’: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/02/how-the-media-cracks-down-on-critics-of-israel
The Guardian, like the BBC, is also equally illiberal on Syria, where any attempt to suggest that the chemical weapons attacks in Ghouta, Khan Shaykhun and Douma might just perhaps have been staged by the ISIS/Al-Qaeda militants who held those areas at the time, in order to gain Western air support against the Asad regime, is immediately shut down. See: https://thegrayzone.com/tag/opcw/; https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/07/bbc-white-helmets-mayday-uk-intelligence/
As Declassified UK has detailed, the Guardian has largely allied itself with Britain’s intelligence organisations over its Middle East reporting. See ‘How the UK Security Services neutralised the country’s leading liberal newspaper’: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-11-how-the-uk-security-services-neutralised-the-countrys-leading-liberal-newspaper/
Correction, I just realised – having just read Kuhnberg’s 09.36 comment on the 22nd (which I must have somehow missed) – that it was in fact Jonathan Freedland who spoke to the guy at the EHRC, and NOT James Dickens. Sorry about that James. But it would be interesting to speak to Mr Pringle never-the-less. or email him, which I think I might just very well do!
Just a question of practicality – how on earth
would she know
(1) That each of the 20K messages were abusive;
(2) That they purported to be from Labour Party members;
(3) That they were ACTUALLY from Labour Party
members.
How easy would it be for agents hostile to this
country to spew forth abusive messages towards
an MP to sow hatred and fear? ANY party would do ..
I would be suspicious of the fact of the reception of THAT number of messages – either she is exaggerating – or they were sent by some manner of “cyber bot” . Whatever the case – why were the police not informed?
As for allegations against “The White Helmets” the BBC program – which I listened to – argued that this was a case of “Fake news which alleged Fake news” ..