The EHRC’s rather large blind spot

Mike Cushman disputes the EHRC’s claim that Labour has a clean bill of health. He argues that as long as Labour singles out Jews who are critical of Israel and only welcomes Jews the leadership agree with it continues to have major problems.

Keir Starmer and David Evens are running a regime that is intolerant of dissent and bullies Jews and others who recognise that the Zionist project is incompatible with universal human rights. A regime that has written into the Party rule book that “Neither the principles of natural justice nor the provisions of fairness shall apply.”

demonstration in support of Jeremy Corbyn

The EHRC seems to believe that Keir Starmer has worked his magic and eradicated antisemitism from the Labour Party although Rachel Reeve’s believes this is only stage one: task completion requires elimination of anti-Zionism as well.

However, the task Starmer set the Party was not elimination of antisemitism, hatred of Jews as Jews. It was the silencing of support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel. The EHRC report provided much evidence of disquiet among Jewish members of the Labour Party and official Jewish community organisations. It found far less evidence of a level of antisemitism that justified such disquiet. The much-cited EHRC report cites three examples of what it claimed to be unlawful behaviour but the evidential and legal basis of each of these has been severely challenged.

Starmer’s programme was not directed primarily at eradicating the low level of actual antisemitic behaviour. It was a public relations exercise aimed at convincing pro-Israel organisations, especially Jewish pro-Israel organisations, that the Party would be reliably supportive of Israel: apartheid, settlements, human rights abuses and all.

The biggest threat to this project was discordant Jewish voices in the Party who were inconveniently opposed to the Zionist project. Starmer and his enforcer, David Evans, set themselves to silence these Jews, to make them feel unsafe in their Party and to drive them out. Their complaints about the abuse they received and the bullying they endured were systematically ignored or summarily rejected. A pattern JVL reported to the EHRC, with detailed case studies, but which the Commission declared was not their responsibility to consider. This contrasts with the credence given to far less well supported claims of ‘antisemitism’ in its report.

It has reached the stage in some constituencies that Jews who do not support Israel have become too frightened to attend Party meetings because of the intimidation and abuse they suffer. They might risk attending if they have even a residual hope that the Party would clamp down on the abusers but instead they see the abusers protected and promoted. Their willingness to bully Jews they disagree with is seen as a positive when they seek to become Council or Parliamentary candidates.

JVL has collected detailed statistics on the number of Jewish Party members who have been investigated, disciplined and expelled from the Party. Jewish members are over five times more likely to be investigated for antisemitism than other members. The figures for members of Jewish Voice for Labour are even high and every single member of JVL’s Executive has had some form of discipline, four of its members have been expelled. Even if it goes no further than investigation the members concerned find the experience oppressive. Jews find it highly offensive to be accused of antisemitism and such accusations are very damaging to their standing and disruptive of their private lives. It is possible, though very rare, for a Jew to be antisemitic. Suggestions that it might be rampant require a detailed underpinning that the Party has never tried to provide.

The only possible explanation is that the Party has decided, ab initio, that for a Jew to be opposed to Zionism as it manifests itself in contemporary Israel is proof of antisemitism. Given the well documented abuses that are systematic in Israel and justified in the name of Zionism, this holds that to be opposed to such abuse is to be antisemitic.

JVL has provided detailed data on this disproportionality to the EHRC. The EHRC has turned its well-developed blind eye to this evidence of discrimination.

In seeking to pursue this course without challenge the Labour Party has incorporated this extraordinary clause in its rule book:

2.1.4.D Neither the principles of natural justice nor the provisions of fairness in Chapter 2, Clause II.8 shall apply to the termination of Party membership pursuant to Chapter 2, Clauses I.4.A and C.

It takes a lifetime of claiming to be a human rights lawyer to have the chutzpah to write that.

The Forde Report does not make comfortable reading for any Party member, it discloses missteps and worse on every side. It does not endorse the way that the Starmer/Evans regime has pursued making the Party welcoming to all members. It is particularly harsh on the misguided path the Party has taken in what Forde describes as its inadequate antisemitism education programme. It is even more severe on the way that an exaggerated attention to the relatively small, while still serious, problem of antisemitism has overshadowed the far larger problem of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia in the Party.

This must be why the specious claims by Starmer are broadcast by the Party while the Forde Report is kept as hidden as possible.

Senior members of the Party are continuing to tell Jews who are not Zionist that they are not welcome in Labour. Rachel Reeves has told us that anti-Zionism is to be banned as well as antisemitism. Margaret Hodge has said that Labour is not the Party for anti-Zionist Jews. We do not become antisemitic because we disagree with Hodge on Israel and it is insulting and hurtful to suggest we do.

Despite its decision that its work in the Party is done the EHRC still has much work to do to ensure that all Jewish members of the Party can feel safe and welcomed.

Comments (24)

  • Jon K says:

    Thank you for such a succinct summary of this Kafkaesque vileness. It is good to know that believing this to be so is not just a figment of my own imagination.

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  • Alan Maddison says:

    A very good review of the dire situation in which we find ourselves.

    It has been said that the fact that the EHRC is funded by the Tories determines the selective approach to its investigations. So most victim groups are let down.

    It seems that Starmer and Evans too are not interested in fighting racism or Islamophobia, the recorded complaints are shamefully low, in contrast to what was reported by both Forde and Chakrabarty.

    In addition, as Forde observed, even dealing with genuine antisemitism appears to be deprioritised in order to weaponise it instead for factional reasons against those with whom they simply disagree.

    The parallel is troubling between Israel, which dismisses any criticism of its illegal and apartheid acts with ludicrous allegations of antisemitism, and Starmer’s Labour Party, which used them to silence critics too.

    But is it really Starmer’s Labour Party? I suppose without debate and Party democracy he seems to think it is.

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  • Alasdair MacVarish says:

    Starmer is following the money. Labour dependent on Zionist funding since Bliair appointed Lord Levy as fund-raiser to enable him break free from membership. Starmer follows with today’s statement ” be pro-Zionist or bugger off”

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  • Anthony Sperryn says:

    I think that it is time that the membership of EHRC , ie the individual human beings composing the EHRC, should be put under the microscope.

    When I last looked at the matter, it seemed that members of the Commission were representative of power blocks in British politics and were not there to give dispassionate judgements on crucial issues.

    The British government is highly supportive of the criminal Israeli regime, as a trade partner, if nothing else. In the way these things work, it is not going to allow its little games (or, perhaps, one should say, its grand strategies) to be upset, so one cannot expect an unbiased judgement to come out of the EHRC.

    A proper membership of EHRC would exclude ALL people with factional interest or history in relation to the topic under consideration, unless it was clear that they had no conflict of interest. There should be no “balance” between opposing views. Something is either right or wrong and who shouts loudest is not necessarily the one who is right..

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  • Alan Marsden says:

    No one who has paid even marginal attention to events in Israel recently, let alone over the last 70 years, can deny that Zionism is racist and therefore that the Apartheid state of Israel is a racist endeavour. Consequently, the IHRA Definition of Anti-semitism is fatally flawed and needs significant revision. The Starmer /Evans Junta’s draconian expulsions are based on its provisions. Labour members should be made aware of this and turn their backs on Starmer.

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  • David Hawkins says:

    A very comprehensive indictment of the Starmer regime. But why do you pull your punches ? Yes the “Zionist project is incompatible with universal human rights” but Zionism is also a openly racist ideology that condones ethnic cleansing. Starmer is a racist who uses bogus accusations of racism to condone actual racism. It is only when we tell the whole truth about Zionism that we will have any hope of basic human rights for the Palestinian people.

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  • stephen mitchell says:

    Its a well known fact the EHRC is packed to the gunwhales with Tory placemen and women who have links with and fund the party. I believe the Fforde Report and the Al Jazeera documentary cleared Corbyn of the charge of antisemitism.. What we have is the worst betrayal by the Right since Ramsey McDonald and his cohorts Thomas and Snowden. Hopes of real change have all but disappeared. The only chance of recovery in our country was implementing socialism. The current leaders have dashed that hope.

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  • Robin De Brea says:

    I have recently joined the Labour Party as I wished to be part of an organisation that has some chance of getting into government. I am so distressed, as a Jew who doesn’t support the Zionist state of Israel, that my presence might not be welcome and that sharing the truth of who I am might get me expelled. There seems to be a lack of tolerance and a generally dictatorial leadership in place at the moment that I might consider myself to be wasting energy knocking my head against a brick wall. I’m not there yet, as that’s not where I want to be. I feel so strongly for those who appear to have been hounded for their support of the Palestinian cause … this is not nice and not what I expected …

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  • Torla Evans says:

    I find it extraordinary that the Labour Party is disproportionately expelling Jews for anti-semitism , but never making it clear those expelled members are Jewish . The mainstream press also tend to ignore this fact . It is patently appalling and needs to be called out . Normalising the apartheid murderous regime in Israel which systematically seeks to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Palestinian population to replace with Jews from all around the world, notable the U.S. is racist . It is also a contravention of the Geneva convention. I salute JVL and one day this topsy turvy world of ours will recognise that Palestinians must live as equal citizens in their own land.

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  • Stephen Richards says:

    Why does everyone seem so surprised? Did you seriously believe that the EHRC was independent and objective? Evidence kept ‘confidential’; anonymous and from selected sources by the ‘selected’ panel. There is so very little integrity in politics.

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  • Charlotte Prager Williams says:

    Thank you Mike and solidarity everyone. I’m lost for further words currently. I salute my comrades who continually find new strength in clearing the path between right and wrong. And meanwhile, Palestinians lose their homes and their lives and their rights and are hounded and intimidated daily.

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  • Joseph Hannigan says:

    My left-wing choir sings songs about apartheid Israel and refugees…does such an act risk expulsion of choristers from the Labour Party?
    I think we Red Stars should be told.

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  • Paul France says:

    Wonderful! Thank you for this!
    Has anyone the statistics of expulsion:- i.e. how many Jews have been expelled for Anti-Semitism and how many non-Jews have been.

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  • John Garrett says:

    Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are hell-bent on rendering their version of the Labour Party a place that is unsafe for Jews who have the temerity to point out Israel’s manifold crimes against humanity – and for anyone else who dares to do so.

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  • Viv Mackay says:

    I’d like to know what the Labour Party leadership has said to criticize the latest travesty of justice proposed by the Knesset to give itself powers to rescind decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court. I can’t recall that they’ve said anything at all however I don’t follow this stuff closely nowadays

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  • David Oates says:

    I remember very well the odious John Mann undermining Ed Milliband via the appalling ‘journalists’ employed by the Jewish Chronicle. This has never been about Antisemitism, so much is obvious when every other avenue available to smear Jeremy Corbyn had failed time and time again.

    Before he was an Antisemite, he was a spy, a Putin apologist(!), a traitorous friend of the IRA, hiding a millionaire status, once consorted with a black lady… etc. etc. I feel this final ploy was a high risk strategy that could only work with a constant media barrage and a gullible population broadly unaware of what actual antisemitism thought exists out there in the social media wild.

    From the very start Jewish groups of Islington have never had their voices heard, once celebrated left wing Jewish voices in the media had to be ignored or demonised, news was constantly full of accusation without opportunity for defence or alternative viewpoint etc.

    We are living through an utterly shameful period of media presentation, no different whatsoever to that of the USA, there was such a frenzy of Corbyn horror stories the papers were falling over one another to outdo the competitor, now they can’t shift position without admitting they were part of the character assassination.

    It’s now quite hilarious reading newspapers, the Guardian in particular, desperately trying to ‘attack’ the Tories without admitting what they claim the Country needs was all in the Labour Manifestos of Jeremy’s era.

    Ignoring both sides of a ‘debate’ or sitting back and looking at the bigger picture – or simply saying ‘hang on, does this add up?’ set us on the path we are now suffering.

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  • Noel Hamel says:

    I agree with Mike Cushman and I would go further. By taking measures that effectively disadvantage advocates for justice and human rights and supporting Israel, the Labour Party is most likely to anger those who care what happens to Palestinians and thereby exacerbate any latent antisemitism, or as it is more correctly called, anti-Zionism.

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  • bob cannell says:

    The suspension of natural justice is for proscribed actions where there is clear para-legal evidence eg an official form as a candidate standing against a Labour candidate in elections. Not unreasonable to terminate membership, tho a right of appeal would be nice incase it was a set up.
    Exclsions from memerbship for prohibited acts eg ‘supporting’ an organisation inimical with the aims and values of the LP as declared by the NEC. List is of core support actions eg being on the ruling body or membership of or financial support for. Clearly not just speaking at a meeting of as a guest speaker. Evans (with Starmers blessing presumably) is misusing this rule and is not operating the tribunal or appeals process in the spirit of the rule Ch2 cClause I para 5. in order to expel members of a different political opinion. Israel is operating in a way ‘inimical with the aims and values of the LP’ and the NEC is duty bound to declare organisations supporting the state of Israel as proscribed with due process for ‘supporters’. otherwise this is against LP rules because it is not in accordance with natural justice (equality under the law). remember suspension of this protection is only for members who stand against official candidates.

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  • George Wilmers says:

    Thank you Mike for your clear exposé of the incoherence of the EHRC’s judgments, though it seems to me quixotic for anyone to have thought that they might behave otherwise. You wrote “The EHRC seems to believe….” which I think is similar to the kind of misconception people have when they ascribe “beliefs” to computer programs such as ChatGPT. I don’t think that the text which the EHRC produces should be taken as representing its subjective “belief” in anything: that is not the de facto institutional purpose of the EHRC, which is rather to codify and streamline the collective judgments and biases of its masters, however incoherent and at variance with the evidence the result may be.

    I do have one other quibble: you refer to “official Jewish community organisations”, implying that some such organisations are “unofficial”. How easily all of us – I am no exception – unconsciously absorb the insidious language of the ruling elite! What exactly is the criterion for a Jewish organisation to be deemed “official” ? Is it the approval of His Majesty’s government? In that case should the leaders of such organisations perhaps be known by the traditional terminology of “Court Jews” ? If not, what decent meaning can be ascribed to the word “official” ?

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  • Linda says:

    JVL and Labour party members will know that self-defence is only possible if one understands very precisely the hostile forces arrayed against them. In this context, Owen Jones’ article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/17/keir-starmer-jeremy-corbyn-left-labour-party?CMP=share_btn_link is helpful.

    Jones writes:-

    “At its centre of [Starmer’s] political strategy is Morgan McSweeney, who now de facto runs the operation as campaigns manager, and is a veteran of the doomed Blairite leadership candidate Liz Kendall’s campaign. McSweeney is committed to the left’s total destruction, telling one ally that he “doesn’t have any room for compromise with the hard left. He thinks they need to be eradicated from the party because they are so dangerous.” Aiding him in this endeavour are two officials: Matt Pound, a veteran organiser of the old Labour right, and Matthew Faulding, an alumni of the Blairite faction Progress.

    There are hints of insecurity in their strategy. Last Friday, Starmer’s strategy director, Deborah Mattinson, delivered a presentation to Labour staff: they should not get too excited, she warned, because the party’s whopping lead was largely down to Tories switching to “don’t know”. ”

    So McSweeney has already failed once (and badly) to sell a high-status party candidate whom most would have expected to win significantly more support than she did. He also seems to be driven by strong prejudice against part of his own party to the point that he’d be incapable of seeing the tactical need to back-track or change course. He’s in an exposed, personally vulnerable position.

    The other interesting thing is that “Guardian” posters are now saying very trenchant, well-written things about their perceptions of Starmer as unfit to be PM, destructive of the Labour party and altogether not the kind of person you’d want as neighbour or boss. Their (anonymous user-name) posts are out in the public domain.

    It should be legally safe to quote those posts should you wish to write to the provincial press about the shenanigans going on within Labour and how you would like Labour to show itself fit to be the next government.

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  • Margaret West says:

    George – in answer to your question about
    “official Jewish Community organisations”
    and who identifies and labels them ..?

    The answer – at least partially – is the MSM by
    its laziness in not investigating the Jewish Community
    properly but just choosing the group that shouts
    the loudest.

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  • june smith says:

    I wholly agree with all this and have been shouting it for years I will.never ever ever vote for Starmer who would be like a dictator He needs to go, or we need a true Labour party

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  • A Amos says:

    To have written into the LP Rule Book, a conditional suspension of the principles of natural justice and provisions of fairness is beyond belief. It’s not what you’d expect from a democratic socialist party, led by someone with a human rights background in Law. To say the least, it seems unnecessarily punitive for the Labour member who commits a proscribed act, to lose (in that instance), the same right to natural justice and procedural fairness accorded all other members. To think how such a conditional clause could be expanded!

    Already this ruling opens the door for the LP to subtly punish all those found “supporting” proscribed organisations. Clause 11.8 starts: ‘Members have the right to dignity and respect, and to be treated fairly by the Labour Party’ (Ch 2). Yet from the left come many accounts of suspended/expelled Labour members waiting endlessly for a response to queries, appeal submissions, for appeal updates but hearing nothing. This doesn’t suggest to me a party treating members with dignity and respect. The PLP must know long, drawn-out suspensions puts members – sometimes lifelong – contribution to the Labour Party, on hold. In this society, moreover, being made to wait on other people’s time is typically a sign of low income, social status and worth (I doubt Labour’s big party donors have long to wait for a response!). So whilst these members are, in principle, given the right to appeal – what does that actually amount to if it’s all too slowly (and rudely) handled? Isn’t justice delayed, justice denied?

    Also disturbing is how this insidious rule against “supporting” a proscribed organisation (and Kafkaesque threat of retrospective expulsion) could be disproportionately affecting working class/left-wing Black, Muslim, Palestinian and Jewish members. For those who already face much ill-treatment, abuse and/or discrimination inside the Party (see the Forde Report & Labour Files), will be the most likely to turn, for relief, to other smaller but infinitely more welcoming political organisations. And what socialist/progressive member wants to get on in the LP, on the back of ‘others’ being excluded because they were too loud and vocal on issues of race? Oh wait, that was the EHRC (Newsweek 2020: Ex-Equalities Commissioners say calling out racism cost them their jobs).

    To my mind JVL is being treated appallingly by Labour. All for daring to have a say on antisemitism: how best to understand and tackle it.

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