The former party staffers who have spoken out about their experiences at Labour HQ deserve our utmost gratitude, writes Daniel Sugarman
July 11, 2019 12:09
For anyone who has not devoted their heart and soul to the Corbyn project, last night’s Panorama programme will have made for grim viewing.
The claim by those close to Jeremy Corbyn that there was no involvement by the Labour leader’s office in party antisemitism cases have been exposed as the lie we knew it to be.
Similarly, the line, trotted out by media proxies for the leadership, that the party’s disciplinary procedures improved once Mr Corbyn’s close political ally, Jennie Formby, became Labour general secretary, have been shown to be false.
The numbers almost told the story better than the words. It has been almost four years since Mr Corbyn became Labour’s leader. Despite the thousands of examples of antisemitism from Labour members which we have seen, and the hundreds of cases reported to the party, the number of people expelled from Labour over the issue is…fifteen.
Fifteen people.
One commenter on social media suggested that if you were a Labour member making antisemitic statements, there was a better chance of you winning the lottery than being kicked out of Labour. That is not entirely accurate, but remarkably, horrifyingly, it is also not nearly as far off the truth as it should be.
But for me, and I imagine, for many of the Jewish people who tuned in to BBC One last night, the hardest part of the documentary was watching the whistleblowers describe their experiences.
To work for Labour in the first place is to have a deep level of dedication to the party. And, as was made clear in the documentary, far from all the former staffers being “Blairites” with a factional axe to grind, as the far-left have claimed, a number of them supported Mr Corbyn when he became party leader, voting for him and backing him.
I have written in the past about how tough it can be, as a Jewish reporter for a Jewish publication, to constantly have to report on horrendous cases of antisemitism.
Over the last few years, week in and week out, the JC has reported on disgusting examples of Jew hate expressed by Labour members. We do not, contrary to what some people seem to think, enjoy doing so.
In fact, I would rather be reporting on almost anything else. Yet we have a duty to report on such cases, because we are the JC and such cases are very much relevant to our community.
Other, non-Jewish, media outlets also need to see that we are reporting on such things. If we do not, what sort of message does it send to them about the seriousness of the issue?
Such reporting is vital. But to call it mentally exhausting would be something of an understatement. Day in, day out, week in, week out, writing about such things takes its toll. Especially when the response from so many has been at best outright denial and at worst outright attacks on our integrity.
I remember the day the police were called in to inspect the account of a former colleague, who had been sent pictures of ovens from an anonymous account. The implication was fairly clear - "Jews going into the ovens" is a standard part of extreme antisemitic rhetoric, related to the Holocaust, when after gassing, the corpses of Jews were cremated in ovens.
The letters we receive in the post are worse, in a way, because someone sending us messages calling us “murderers of Palestinian babies” for instance, has taken the time to look up our address and buy a stamp.
I know, being fairly active on social media, that those, Jewish or not, who take the time and effort to call out antisemitism within Labour or the far-left as a whole can expect it to take a sometimes devastating toll on their mental health.
And yet, what we do have is the knowledge that there are people out there who stand with us. The Jewish community, minus a few cranks, stands with us. We know that we are in the right – and when we see the evil of antisemitism, we can call it out.
The seven whistleblowers featured on last night’s Panorama episode were seeing something very similar to us. Day in, day out, week in, week out, there were viewing countless examples of antisemitism, from Labour members.
But whereas we could talk about it, publish these things, protest in every way – they had to keep silent. They were not allowed to discuss these cases with anyone on the outside.
They were subjected to the General Secretary of Labour appointing someone over them who would directly interfere in open-and-shut cases of antisemitism and downgrade the punishment, saying that he didn’t see a big issue with what the accused had said.
And they couldn’t tell a soul, apart from each other, about what they were seeing.
It is small wonder that at least two of them had breakdowns and another, as described, thought seriously about killing himself.
These whistleblowers are heroes. Their decision to risk legal action and break non-disclosure agreements the party made them sign (despite Labour having publicly declared its opposition to NDAs) took extreme bravery.
A number of them resigned from the party when they left their jobs at party HQ. It’s not hard to see why – if you’ve worked for a supposedly anti-racist party, yet seen the grim reality behind that lie, why indeed would you wish to remain part of such a political force?
And yet, when I think of these brave men and women, I cannot help but think that they have upheld the true values of the Labour movement, and have reminded us what Labour should stand for.
“Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer”, it is they who have truly kept “the red flag flying here.”
