A new Al Jazeera documentary has suggested that “operatives secretly took control” of the Labour Party to thwart Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
The three-part series, "The Labour Files: The Purge”, comes ahead of Labour's annual party conference beginning in Liverpool on Saturday.
The Qatari-owned outlet has said its latest film explores internal documents, emails and social media messages that reveal “how senior officials in one of the two parties of government in the UK ran a coup by stealth against the elected leader of the party.”
It said the programme showed “how officials set about silencing, excluding and expelling its own members in a ruthless campaign to destroy the chances of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Britain’s prime minister,” including how “candidates for key political roles were blocked and constituency groups suspended as the party’s central office sought to control the elected leadership”.
The documentary includes an apparent attempt to discredit former Union of Jewish Students president Ella Rose, who was director of the Jewish Labour Movement from 2016 to 2018 and one of many prominent voices calling out Jew-hate under Mr Corbyn. In the clips, she appears to joke that she could “take” pro-Corbyn MP Jackie Walker, as she “is only 5’2’ and tiny”. She also goes on to say that an unspecified “they” “can go die in a hole”.
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a newly elected NEC member who has since been suspended from the party for speaking at an event organised by a proscribed group, is then shown describing Ms Rose’s comments as “smug”.
Testimony is also shown from Labour’s former Hove constituency social media officer, Damian McCarthy, who says he was wrongly accused of antisemitism.
The film also includes footage of Harrow councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick denying allegations of Jew-hate after she was criticised for sharing social media posts that denied Mr Corbyn's leadership had issues with antisemitism.
David Collier, a freelance investigative journalist, said that, ''there is real irony in a Qatari state-funded mouthpiece spending considerable resources to push out a stream of Corbynista propaganda whilst simultaneously accusing Israel of interfering in UK politics”.
“Al-Jazeera cherry-picks at partially visible information, to create an atmosphere of hidden conspiracy and establishment power – which in turn they use to bolster the well-known antisemitic tropes – fuelling the very antisemitism they set out to deny.
“The only result from this propaganda piece will be an increase of abuse against the very people who were the real victims of Corbyn’s time in power. The Jews – and those that stood by them. But then perhaps this is their ultimate anyway.”
In 2017 several UK Zionist activists and an ex-employee of the Israeli embassy complained to Ofcom over Al Jazeera’s documentary “The Lobby" which focused on alleged Israeli influences in UK politics. They said the film was antisemitic and contained issues relating to editing, bias, and privacy infringements. However, the media watchdog rejected the complaints.
