The Forde Report Proves the Labour Machine Was Rotten to Its Core
JVL Introduction
This article by Aaron Bastani of Novara Media appeared on publication of the Forde Report in July 2022. As well as summarising its main conclusions Bastani deals with the complete failure of the media to do its job and even make any pretence of balanced, investigative reporting.
Plus ça change. So we are reposting the article with a longer than usual JVL introduction now that some of these issues are in the news again with Martin Forde KC deciding to speak out about the neglect of his Report.
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Bastani’s article describes the unwillingness of the Labour Party and the media to address the outrageous conduct of very senior right-wing Labour HQ staff exposed in the Forde and Leaked Labour reports.
This included half of them caught making abusive racist comments, over a hundred times more prevalent than any discriminatory comments found among left-wing Labour members whose social media accounts were selectively trawled.
It also seems that all these 18 anti-Corbyn directors and senior managers were active or complicit in the appalling anti-democratic weaponising of antisemitism designed to selectively discredit Corbyn and his supporters, and to rig the leadership ballots.
Starmer maintains this is all in the past, and that he has implemented the report’s 165 recommendations.
Forde is unconvinced, and is now publicly saying it is unacceptable that Starmer has failed to engage with him and his collaborators on the explosive findings of his report, especially the apparent hierarchy of racism and discrimination also in the wider Labour organisation. (And “implementing the recommendations” seems to mean considering but rejecting many of the core ones.)
The fabricated factional attacks on the left by Labour HQ staff and many others in the Labour organisation have, if anything, intensified under the direction of Evans and Starmer and go on to this day. Complaints of abuse or discrimination from left-wing Jews or other ethnic minorities continue to be ignored. The results of selective factional trawls for alleged antisemitism still dominate the published figures, and those for racism, Islamophobia and other protected characteristics remain ridiculously low.
The silent complicity of the mainstream media, and most of the PLP, has allowed this outrageous situation to continue. It is still left to journalists like Aaron Bastani and alternative media outlets to tell us that ‘The Labour Machine is rotten to the core’.
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Fri 22 Jul 2022. Read the original here.
The Forde Report Proves the Labour Machine Was Rotten to Its Core
And the mainstream media covered it up.
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I never subscribed to the notion that ‘honest’ Keir Starmer had a mission to clean up the Labour Party and banish racism. On the contrary, there seem to have been two clear aims: 1/ to rubbish Jeremy Corbyn and 2/ to cancel the membership of those campaigning for justice for Palestinians and an end to conflict in Palestine, particularly long-standing Jewish members.
It’s a pity, in an otherwise fair commentary, that Aaron Bastani described the EHRC Report as ‘a largely thoughtful document’. It was nothing of the kind.
The EHRC Report, apart from being drawn up by a far-Right sympathiser Alasdair Henderson, who had tweeted in support of the fascist Roger Scruton [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/30/ehrc-board-member-under-scrutiny-over-social-media-use] proceeded from an assumption that the ‘antisemitism’ allegations were true backwards. In other words it was guilty of reverse engineering.
Its finding against 2 Labour Party members, Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley, was solely because they poured cold water on the whole ‘antisemitism’ affair. In other words ‘antisemitism’ consisted of political speech that Zionists didn’t like.
Quite what was thoughtful about this beggars belief.
Equally importantly is why the EHRC ever involved itself in an internal party dispute. It has, after all, refused to investigate Islamaphobia in the Tory Party despite copious evidence.
The EHRC is a state appointed body stuffed with Tory appointees. It is in no sense an anti-racist body and it was yet one more instance of Corbyn’s political failures that he didn’t attack its involvement from the start.
I ma glad that the worm has turned, but Bastani was conspicuous for his cowardice when the ‘Corbyn anti-semitism’ scare was at its height.
How can any of this be true when I have not heard it on the BBC nor even Channel 4 nor any of the other ‘reputable’ sources of news, such as ……………….?
Tony Greenstein finishes his post by saying:
The EHRC is a state appointed body stuffed with Tory appointees. It is in no sense an anti-racist body and it was yet one more instance of Corbyn’s political failures that he didn’t attack its involvement from the start.
Well I agree with him on the first couple of points, but of course totally reject his assertion that Jeremy should have attacked the EHRCs involvement from the outset, AND, that it was one more instance of Corbyn’s political failures’ that he didn’t.
The irony is that in the above article Bastani points out examples of the one-sided corruptness of the MSM on at least a couple of occasions, and yet Greenstein – as he’s done on literlally dozens and dozens of occasions during the past six/seven years in respect of the A/S smears in general – would have readers believe that Jeremy could have condemned the EHRC (at the outset) and not been condemned and vilified and demonised by the MSM for doing so, along with the Jewish newspapers and the BoD and JLM and CAA and LAA and CST and LFI et al and the Blairites and the leadership of the Tories and the LibDems, and done so with mountain-loads of faux outrage. As if! of course they would have!!
But perhaps Tony could tell us what he would have had Jeremy say exactly.
But I doubt it somehow!
tony greenstein talking nonsense to say the EHRc is full of tories ,
trevor philips david goodshart, there’s loads of labour appointees
If Keir Starmer and NEC do not reverse the recent decision to not allow my late sixties, early seventies, friend Jeremy Corbyn to stand as Labour Candidate for his North Islington constituency, and restore the Labour parliamentary whip to him, it will be a death warrant for Labour’s chances of overhauling the current Tory 83-seat overall Commons majority and we, and the rest of the country, including my fast growing Green Party, will feel alienated against any thoughts of a possible Labour victory in the coming 2024 Generel Election and we’ll work even harder for a progressive anti-Tory coalition without Starmer Labour at the helm.