Watch a key Panorama smear being taken apart
JVL Introduction
Delightful and utterly convincing take down of the producers of the Panorama Programme Is Labour Antisemitic? on one of its core claims, made by Labour party investigator Ben Westerman that, during the course of his investigation he was “confronted with the very antisemitism he had been investigating”.
We’ve reported on this before – most recently in OfCom please note – Cracks widen in BBC Panorama Labour Antisemitism edifice.
Michael Walker has put all the relevant recent evidence together in this Novara Media video: George Monbiot’s questioning of the story, John Ware and Neil Grant’s long letter in response in the Guardian and then a playing of the recording with a transcript, followed by the letter by Rica Bird and Helen Marks finally published by the Guardian, refuting the allegations once again.
It’s an 11’21” video and great entertainment. We urge you to watch it through.
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Sat 4 Mar 2023. Read the original here.
Well done Michael Walker for putting all this down in one place. John Ware and Neil Grant will be hard pressed to wriggle out.
I’ve just been reading the Leaked Labour Report which came out after the Panorama programme. It presents evidence of deliberate politicly driven fabrications of antisemitism complaints, so a false allegation about Rica and Helen would seem a normal practice for GLU staff.
In fact it was this practice of factional fabrications and left- winger purges that contributed to genuine antisemitism complaints not being dealt with despite rising protests.
I was also shocked by the evidence that one of the key witnesses, Sam Matthews, failed to act on many serious antisemitism complaints, despite being reminded by the NEC, and then misled LOTO about the mounting back log.
We also see Matthew’s Panorama claims of Corbyn’s interference slowing down his work were false. Ed Miliband used to get involved with many comolaints but Jeremy Corbyn stopped that, except for very high profile ones, the handling of which he did not slow down. In fact he tried to speed things up.
If the bbc will not admit misleading the public with the evidence from witnesses at the time, perhaps we can present this ‘new’ evidence demonstrating witness unreliability, and misinformation and ask them to review Panorama’s misleading conclusions which inflicted so much harm on Jeremy Corbyn and all his supporters.
This is all documented, Forde says it is reliable, and we should certainly not rest until justice has been done, for the sake of our very democracy.
THE BBC if it says ita reliable accurate unbiased organisation should apologise. Also since when has John Ware been a objective reporter
Tidy. To the point. Nails it, good work. Thanks
So they lied to smear Corbyn? What a surprise. It felt at the time the whole British press was doing nothing else.
“Are you from Israel?” Does anyone in their right mind believe anyone would have asked that question? It’s impossible to conceive. Why would they do that? And stretching a point – if they did, how could that be construed as anti-semitic? In what way please tell me.
Is there something more to Westerman’s refusal to answer the straight-forward question? He sounds distinctly uncomfortable. My guess is that he was not a LP member and didn’t want to say so. AFAIK there is no requirement for HQ staff to be members, and nor should there be, organisations should recruit the best person for the job. Some roles will specify that candidates must have a ‘good understanding of Labour Party policies / roles / rules / procedures’ or whatever, most won’t. Anyone know about Westerman? Maybe he even had other political affiliations. To be fair, I will add that in the ‘labour antisemitism report’, Westerman emerges as the most reasonable of the GLU unit, lifting or querying suspensions that were purely politically motivated or unfair. I suppose we could ask him, his email address is available online in his current role.
Just watched it. The alleged antisemitic comment reminds me of the reversal of the time-sequence at the Orgreave picket on the BBC News whereby it was made to appear that the miners attacked the police lines first rather than, as happened, the police attacked the miners
I recall that Ken Loach made a documentary on this inexplicable mix up. Perhaps he could be persuaded to make one on the Ware programme and the wider issue of antisemitism in the Labour Part.
Good rebuttal of a central smear of the Panorama programme. But the last line about smearing ‘nice old people’ is ageist and condescending.
Thoroughly unprofessional. The stain has spread, wide into the BBC, the Guardian, the Labour Party.
Where have all the honest journalists gone?
I am surprised that Novara hosted this investigation, given that Bastani and others completely caved in to the antisemitism allegations at the time. Can anyone explain?
If Westerman was “confronted with the very antisemitism he was sent to investigate” then it is pertinent to ask:
Did Westerman report and log this ‘antisemitic incident’ on the party’s complaints system at the time? If not, why not?
Did he mention the incident in his report/findings from his visit?
Did any of these allegations appear on the charge sheets of Mrs Marx and Mrs Bird?
If the answer to these questions is no then the BBC don’t have a leg to stand on. The two ladies should get legal advice as to whether criminal acts have been committed under the Malicious Communications Act.
‘Sloppy journalism?’
I do not think so. Were any mistakes made that favoured Corbyn?
The bit I liked best in John Ware’s rather lame rebuttal in the Guardian is where he explains how Izzy Lenga’s testimony got so mixed up that her description of Right Wing antisemitic abuse when she was a student, years before Corbyn became leader, suddenly appeared as a description of recent Left Wing abuse under Corbyn.
Apparently, the recording got all “mixed up in the editing”. It’s a bit like when Kuenessberg’s interview with Corbyn also got all “mixed up in the editing”, so that he appeared to be giving one answer to a question when in reality, it was an answer to an entirely different question.
Is this the journalistic equivalent of “the dog ate my homework”? Or perhaps the BBC needs to send some of its editors on an editing refresher- they clearly have some pretty obvious training needs!
Oh, and doesn’t Ms Lenga currently occupy a senior role in the Party? I’m surprised she hasn’t insisted they set the record straight- after all, she wouldn’t want to be inadvertently bringing the Labour Party into disrepute, would she?
First of all well done Michael Walker
If its found that tha allegations made by the BBC and the producer of the program are not true
And was done in order to prevent the leader of the labour party
A man who was hoping to be the next Prime Minister of the country
Then surely this is a very serious matter
Because its resulted in ending that leader of the labour parties career and with it any hope he had of becoming the PM
Which now makes this inteference in the political system of this country to get rid of the leader of a political party were the leader of that party won 2 leadership elections the First one he won by an overwhelming majority and the Second one which was a challenge to his leadership And which he also won by an overwhelming majority with an increase of the votes
Also it should be known that the leader also increased the membership to well over 500,000 members of the party and cleared any money the party owed and in doing so left the party financially a lot better off
Yet party rules were reported to have been changed to make it harder for anyone wanting to become members to afford
This Leader came within 2700 votes of getting into government in the 2017 General Election but was reportedly hindered by staff and MPs of his own party working against their own leader so he would loose
Also we had allegations by labour MPs who went to the media to give interviews to them to further cause damage to the leader by their false accusations against him and those who supported him in the labour party on the time commingnup to the 2019 General Election
And in fact not long after this happening it seemed that the whole media was attacking the leader with false allegations against him
All the evidence to back what went on is there for all to see
And if a good legal expert looked into it They could prove once and for all
That a decent and compassionet human beings career as labour party leader ended Because of political and personal dislike to him and his supporters
By those labour party MPs who contributed to it which ended in the leaders downfall for nothing more than their own political gains and self8sh agenda
I wonder how long the BBC can hold the line on this and other aspects in a documentary which was a frontal attack on Britain’s second largest party, before an impending election by a supposedly impartial national broadcaster. Now compounded by misrepresentation of EHRC and Forde. Last night Newsnight’s piece on right-left struggle over judicial independence in Israeli politics without reference to the Palestinians and the recent settler attack on Huwwara (pictures of burnt-out cars without explanation of what happened). How do BBC journos feel about their own standards of journalism when they see things like this?
It is telling that the question,’are you from Israel?’ is here interpreted, without any qualification, as being in and of itself anti-semitic. The inference that we are supposed to make, that in the context of such a meeting, the person asking this question must naturally be critical of Israel and therefore of the Jewish people, is, of course, a totally false inference. That the question was never actually asked is simply confirming the kind of journalistic mendacity which has made the BBC, along with the MSM generally, so completely untrustworthy.
This whole incident seems astonishingly badly handled. And in Westerman’s case, he was simply lying, for reasons one can only guess at. As for the ‘where are you from’ question, if I were being interviewed like this I would certainly want to know, by what right the interviewer was doing this: what was his remit, who had appointed him and so on. Bad faith oozes from this whole business at every turn.
Nothing ‘sloppy’ about that bit of journalism. ‘Sloppy’ implies careless and poorly executed. I’m sure it was neither. I’d be inclined to go for ‘dishonest’ or ‘cynical’.