OfCom please note – Cracks widen in BBC Panorama Labour Antisemitism edifice
JVL Introduction
It took ten days but the Guardian has finally done the right thing and published a letter from the two retired Jewish women wrongly accused of antisemitism in BBC Panorama’s Is Labour Antisemitic? documentary broadcast in July 2019.
The letter from Helen Marks and Rica Bird responding to John Ware’s comments on George Monbiot’s article is reposted below.
Yes it took time but this is the first time Helen Marks and Rica Bird’s evidenced rebuttal of a woundingly, false narrative has been aired on the UK mainstream media.
So this is the third public challenge to the notorious Panorama programme which did so much to damage Labour’s chances in the 2019 general election.
Apart from the Ben Westerman incident explained in this Guardian letter, there is the curious “clarification” on the BBC’s Corrections and Clarifications page, showing that an interview with one of the Panorama “whistleblowers” had been edited out of all recognition. Neo-fascist abuse of Jewish university students was presented as antisemitism from the Labour left.
At least as damning is the examination by the Forde Report of an exchange of emails between Seumas Milne, communications director in Jeremy Corbyn’s Leader Of The Opposition (LOTO) team, and members of the hostile bureaucracy led by then General Secretary (now Lord) Iain McNichol. Forde noted the mischievous editing by Panorama of the Milne email to make it appear that he was defending a Corbyn ally accused of antisemitism. Panorama presenter John Ware has gone to extraordinary lengths to justify this segment by accusing Jewish Voice for Labour’s national secretary Glyn Secker of antisemitic conduct. Ware’s 6,000 word peroration on TheArticle.com was so riddled with inaccuracies that it felt obliged to publish Secker’s response in full.
Much more has been said, written and broadcast about the bias and inaccuracy in the July 2019 Panorama programme, in particular Al Jazeera’s revelations in its Labour Files.
Surely it is time for the broadcasting regulator OfCom to revisit its decision not to investigate Is Labour Antisemitic?
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Tue 28 Feb 2023. Read the original here.
Panorama’s antisemitism claim against us was unfounded
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The conservative establishment were terrified of the mass movement around Corbyn, a radical left challenge to what they considered ‘acceptable’ from the Labour party. The whole ‘anti-semitism’ issue has highlighted the institutional bias against any challenge to the present political order
The fact that Ben Westerman’s claims were untrue was first put into the public domain in July 2019, ten days after the Panorama ‘Is Labour antisemitic?’ programme: https://www.thecanary.co/investigations/2019/07/19/fresh-testimony-from-labour-members-could-blow-panoramas-antisemitism-claims-wide-open/
What a ‘surprise’ that it has taken the Guardian two-and-a-half years (and well after Corbyn has been well and truly destroyed) to half-admit this fact.
les “The conservative establishment were terrified of the mass movement around Corbyn, a radical left challenge to what they considered ‘acceptable’ from the Labour party”
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Even more bizarre is that Corbyn really isn’t on the radical left: he is more a classic post-war Social Democrat, with an unwavering commitment to human rights across the world. It is only that the ‘Overton Window’ in Britain has moved so far to the right that Corbyn looks like some kind of radical to the mainstream press and commentators.
If Labour MPs had agreed to work with Corbyn, rather than seeking to destroy him “from day one” (Simon Danczuk), they would have got a Labour government in 2017, and they would probably have got 50% of what they wanted (while Corbyn and his supporters got the other 50%).
The defeat of Corbyn by the Labour Party hierarchy was the triumph of hatred over common sense – and show why Labour can never, ever be trusted again with political power.
I’m heartily sick of the witch hunt surrounding Labour and it’s members when Jeremy Corbyn was our twice elected leader. We chose him for his unceasing and lifelong dedication to the Labour cause and working people. He was vilified and wrongly accused of vile bigotry and we, his supporters, were similarly accused and called names, bullied and marginalised because we too believed the n fairer and kinder politics and Corbyn’s manifesto. The powers in this country and others united to lie and cheat their way into power and remain there spouting their bile. I am no longer a “Labour” supporter and never will be again until the current leadership and its supporters acknowledge their false accusations and resign. This is one small step forward in that direction.
In fact I put the story of Ben Westerman’s lies about what Rica Bird had actually said up on my blog on July 15 2019, just 5 days after the programme was broadcast. (see below)
James Dickins is right. Corbyn was nothing more than an old-fashioned social democrat with a history of supporting anti-imperialist causes. But that was too much, much too much, for the British Establishment.
And thus we see the thin layer of democracy covering the undemocratic nature of British capitalism in all its glory with ‘journalists’ like John Ware only too willing to do their bidding.
Corbyn faced, from the beginning, a full frontal attack that was looking for any pretext to be rid of him. ‘Antisemitism’ was the chosen weapon.
Although people get hung up about whether there was antisemitism in the Labour Party (of course there were a few antisemites, always have been) and whether it was x% or y% in reality it was never about antisemitism.
The BBC’s War on Corbyn – Panorama would have made Pravda Proud
Is Labour Anti-Semitic? was the title – but the answer was never in doubt
https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-bbcs-war-on-corbyn-panorama-would.html
yes it is sad that MPs did not work with Corbyn whether they disagreed or not. All as rightly said Corbyn is actually social democrate. Most of Europe are much further to the left than any of Corbyns modest proposals.If they had fully cooperated we could have had a descent Gov and would not be in mess that we are in today.The big Question is why? Starmer said he would keep Corbyns manifesto which was very popular. If they had done this things would have been much better than anything we now have.Who was Starmer taking his instructions from? I have no doubt it will come out one day for sure. Either way Starmer looks a fraud
Regards what James says, I think the Establishment were afraid that if Jeremy won a GE and attained power, that a significant majority of the electorate would approve of his programme – his government’s programme, that is – and like what they’re doing and, as such, keep voting them back in. And it would of course have put the Blairites – right-wing Labour MPs – in a difficult and invidious position, because if they were seen to be voting against renationalisaton of the utlities etc and social welfare progammes, they would be exposing themselves to the electorate for what they really are.
Mind you, they would of course have had the Establishment’s propaganda machine on their side trying to manipulate public opinion about whatever with their lies and falsehoods and distortions. With lots of scare-mongering thrown in, no doubt!
As for George Monbiot’s article, why does he refer to factional warfare and (reigniting) civl war, when the reality is that it was just the bully boys and girls on the right beating up the left who were completely defenceless against the smears and slurs.
And they’re STILL at it! But that’s sadists for you!
The reference to factionalism may, perhaps, reflect the language used in the Forde Report.
I am very glad that the tide is turning. I am myself a son of a holocaust survivor, wrongly accused of anti Semitism , so I know what all who have been accused of it go through. It is the worst thing to be accused of , when having fought against all racism all my life. When people state that Jeremy Corbyn should of done more , they really have no idea what the label feels like, when the opposite is true. Stay strong.You have the knowledge that the truth is at last shining through.
Now we know what “a very British coup” looks like.
Although Corbyn’s politics might be characterized as social democratic, I think that labour winning the 2017 election would have had much more profound effects than just putting him in government with a few reforms to follow. It could well have unleashed a major radicalisation and a mass movement for serious measures to tackle austerity and it could have also led to demands on social.issues, like racism, asylum seekers, drugs and crime etc. You cannot explain the viciousness of the ruling class’s attacks on Corbyn by just looking at the person and his relatively mild policies.
This has implications for how the left views the (im)possibility of “reforming” the Labour party and the British state.
I was always considered to be a LP activist. Now I am not…and not likely to be in the future under Starmer and those who seem to run him.
In the Labour Party ‘we trust’; in the BBC ‘we trust’; in the Guardian ‘we trust’; in the EHRC ‘we trust’; in Off-Com ‘we trust’; in our Exeucutive & Judiciary ‘we trust’; in our MSM ‘we trust’……………..why are we so trusting? Perhaps we are just a little confused by our inability to ‘do anything about it’?
Apposite & considered comments, all. I’m a socialist & member of the Labour party for some 38 years [still?! Why?!]. The grotesque response that the forces of greed & dare I say, ‘evil’, managed to mobilise is almost beyond belief. However, insofar as the public were concerned, the so-called ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis was somewhat lost in the white noise of the skewed-narrative of discourse during Jeremy’s ‘leadership’. The BBC & other ‘MSM’, take their editorial lead from the sewer formally known as Fleet St. which suits them well. As per Herman & Chomsky, the ‘debate’ is encouraged within the narrow confines ‘so defined’. The ‘skill’ of the BBC, is firstly to omit any form of objective truth it considers awkward – it’s their preferred weapon of propaganda, straight from the Goebbels playbook, duly paid for, on pain of prison, by us powerless subjects; ‘We don’t mention it, so it doesn’t exist.’. The ‘push’ they wish to promulgate then gets repeated ad nauseam. Far from containing objective reality, a ‘Chinese water torture’, drip, drip, drip, seeps into the consciousness in such an insidious way, it’s practically impossible to undo. Radio 4 had more than 5,000 mentions of ‘Corbyn’, ‘Labour’ & ‘anti-Semitism’, on its own. Multiply that by every station/channel & you’ll get what? A quarter of a million mentions? The fact that Panorama took the view that blatant lies were required & duly repeated on prime-time TV shows that our enemies, foreign & domestic’s ‘chutzpah’, was in their minds, truly incontestable. The City of London, twinned with Cayman Islands, Panama, Monaco & Jersey, etc. has truly won. The plight of Palestinians, however, & indeed every other inhabitant of the current state of Israel & the wider world, is thus condemned to repeat its cycle of destruction & yachts & jets are back on the agenda. Our fight begins anew. Solidarity.
Ian’s question “Who was Starmer taking his instructions from?” is something I’ve long pondered too.
I wanted to know why the weapon of choice selected against Corbyn was antisemitism. UK voters in general don’t seem that bothered by muted racism in individual political parties or politicians.
WHY didn’t they simply attack Corbyn’s policies (the obvious choice as they disliked them)? Too popular amongst the voters – once explained – for a head-on attack to be anything other than counter-productive? Maybe unsuitable as a rallying call against Corbyn because too complicated to explain to the general public?
I think antisemitism may have been chosen as the weapon of attack because it worked as a hub issue, of at least tangential importance to every (?) group attacking Corbyn and Corbynism for largely unrelated reasons. They didn’t have any other issue which worked better to unite them as a disparate group. Would the right-wingers inside Labour working for a return to Blairism really want to position themselves directly with the forces supporting the Israeli government and settlers; or the US right-wing Christian fundamentalists supporting Trump? I think not.
The attraction for choice of ‘antisemitism’ as the weapon of attack was that it’s so difficult for the accused (Corbyn) to deny a negative, as the McCarthy hysteria worked so well for so long, needing no evidence of proof.
It failed in the end when one ‘trial’ ended in an outbreak of common sense. Unfortunately there has been no high-publicity official ‘trial’ for facts to emerge so on it goes in the LP. Could we now be seeing a small break in the unanimity of Corbyn’s lying opponents?
Here is a fun extract from Novara Media’s Michael Walker on this story: https://twitter.com/i/status/1631011111590850560
I have no confidence in any change of heart at either the Guardian or the BBC. The interests that motivate them now are the ones that motivated them then, and they have too much invested in their formerly hateful positions and their undeserved reputations for fairness and balance to recant. If anything the war to destroy Corbyn’s reputation has gathered a new head of steam, fed by the fear that the left will launch some new challenge to the Starmer Party just as it seems on the brink of winning power. The enemies of inequality and freedom from oppression never give up; they remain constantly alert to any threat to their dominance of power and the media narrative. Just today I have seen Margaret Hodge and the JLM warning the Green Party against welcoming the ‘antisemites’ who have left the Labour Party into their ranks. Whether or not the Green Party heeds those warnings has yet to be seen.
Arselicking supporters of settler colonialism are now a wee bit uncomfortable evidenced by Margaret Hodge’s article in the Guardian on Friday. They still have long way to go before they recognise that Israels are the last of the European settler/colonials.
Dear Sir/Madam,
The attack on the Left began in 2009 when John Bercow was elected Speaker (the Miliband were also unjustly attacked), and during the press’ campaign of hate against Jeremy Corbyn, anti-Semitism in the Tory Party.
For example, in Burgess Hill where it was conveniently forgotten, ignored or overlooked. I was both a witness and a victim but fought back – I am an old soldier and a sabra. This town has lost much international investment.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Stephen Nicholls, Centre for Pomeranian-Jewish Studies