Glyn Secker responds to the Labour Party

Glyn Secker, captain of the Jewish Boat to Gaza, with Holocaust survivor Reuvan Moskovitch, sailing to Gaza in 2010

JVL Introduction

On 29th April Glyn Secker received a letter  informing him “that the Labour Party (the Party) has received an allegation that you have committed a Prohibited Act contrary to the provisions of Chapter 2, Clause I.5 of the Labour Party Rule Book (the Rule Book), and giving him 14 days “to make written representations in response to this allegation within…”


Glyn Secker responds

12th May 2022

To the Governance and Legal Unit

Re. your notice to auto-expel me from the Party

In your correspondence of the 29th of April 2022, the grounds you cite as the basis for my expulsion are that I proposed a motion at the founding conference of the Labour Left Alliance in February 2020.  Labour Left Alliance was proscribed by the Labour Party in March 2022, thus my participation in its conference was a full two years before its proscription.

You are thus applying the proscription retrospectively. I am not aware of any English law in the modern period which has been applied retrospectively. This is a gross violation of the principles of natural justice.

This is also true of the disciplinary procedures – where there is virtually no right of appeal, often no right to representation in person, no right to paid legal advice – although the Party on its side employs lawyers; in addition, discussion of such irregularities has itself been defined as not competent business.

The rights of members to engage in free debate have been curtailed, for example consideration of the merits of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism or the removal of the Whip from Jeremy Corbyn were categorised as ‘not competent business’, and the draconian disciplinary procedures lie in wait for any challengers. This sets an appalling standard for a party seeking to be the government of our democracy and civil rights.

I was one of, if not the first Jewish member to be suspended on grounds of antisemitism. The ‘evidence’ was that I visited, that is looked at, a Facebook page called Palestine Live; it was so flimsy that my suspension was lifted in five days. I was at the time and still am Secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour. Clearly my suspension was political, and a sign of things to come.

Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 General Election result deeply shocked both the national and the Labour Party establishment, for in voting figures he came to within 2,227 of forming a government, to quote The Independent, “If he had won seven seats narrowly taken by the Conservatives, he would have had the opportunity to form a ‘progressive alliance’ with the other smaller parties”

Unable to demolish his overwhelmingly popular policies, his enemies embarked on character assassination and destruction of the Party’s credibility. The chosen method was the weaponisation of antisemitism with its evocation of the Holocaust, against which the vast majority of the population naturally recoil. The relentless media campaign was successful and contributed to the heavy Labour defeat of 2019.

The only proper data produced on the incidence of antisemitism in the Labour Party were issued by the previous General Secretary, Jennie Formby. At the height of the period of the allegations, for the period April 2018 – Feb 2019, when the party membership topped 540,000 (although this excludes the huge trade union affiliated membership) the figures were:

  1. a) 1,106 allegations of antisemitism

433 of these had nothing to do with LP members

  1. b) Of the remaining 673 to be investigated, 220 were dismissed entirely for lack of evidence,
  2. c) Leaving 453 (0.08% of the membership) to be adjudicated on,
  3. d) Of these 96 were suspended, which equated to 0.01% of the membership
  4. e) And 12 were expelled, which equated to 0.002% of the membership.

This compares with the national figure for those holding antisemitic views of between 2 – 5%  (Institute for Jewish Policy Research). It is clear that this is not the tsunami of antisemitism in the Party described by the national media and current Leader, leading the public to believe that around a third of Labour Party members were antisemitic.

When the accusations of antisemitism were first launched against Jeremy, I and other Jewish comrades decided that there needed to be a Jewish voice to counter this offensive, the nature of which was clear to us from the outset. We have become a significant player in the debate on antisemitism and have been targeted accordingly – see our latest submission to the EHRC. The Labour Party’s response was to turn the weapon of accusations of antisemitism against us, defining us as ‘the wrong sort of Jews’, an accusation which has hardened over time, or to ignore or to discount our Jewish identity, and even to treat us as an antisemitic threat.

We have now reached the stage where 52 Jews have been subject to investigations, threatened with expulsion or expelled, most on anonymous allegations of antisemitism. All the officers of JVL have now been or are being disciplined, and some have been expelled. Many of us are of an age where members of our parents’ generation died in the Holocaust. JVL itself is regularly castigated as antisemitic by groups and leading figures close to the Party establishment. The absurdity and obscenity of this is truly remarkable.

Following the 2019 general election defeat what remained for the new Labour leadership was to clear out the left activist base of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters, which continues apace. The action includes control of the way constituency parties run their meetings, even shutting them down, and the imposition of candidates for national and local elections.

As a Jewish socialist I call on the Party to put a halt to this process, which is hollowing out its labour movement base just at a time when the working class is facing its deepest crisis since the 1930s, with some 12 million literally unable to feed themselves adequately, including 5 million of their children.

The Labour Peer Prem Sikka has warned that, “In 1976, workers’ share of gross domestic product (GDP) in the form of wages and salaries was 65.1%, (but) with the attacks on trade unions, the rise of zero hour contracts, temporary work, agency fire and rehire policies, just before the 2020 pandemic workers share of GDP fell to 47%. Capital increased its share of GDP at the expense of workers […] That under the Health and Care Act 2022, the NHS will be a mere shell of its former self. Its main function will be to dole out contracts to private corporations […] and that the Police, Crime and Courts Bill criminalises protests […] (yet) the Labour party is weak and continues to distance itself from trade unions and worker rights. Without a strong social movement of the people, the coup will further intensify”.

Whilst writing this the Fire Brigades Union has just announced that at its annual conference it will be considering the following motion:

“The Labour Party has “seemingly attempted to purge itself of socialists, actively distance itself from working men and women and sought to align itself with big business […]  Conference is no longer convinced that the aims and objectives of the Labour Party reflect those of the FBU. With this in mind conference demands the FBU disaffiliate from the Labour Party nationally with immediate effect.”

If this is carried the FBU will follow the BFAWU, the Bakers Union, which has already left the Party for similar reasons. More unions can be expected to follow.

In this crisis where millions are being driven into deep poverty, I call on the Labour Party to reverse its abandonment of the labour movement and its alignment with big business, to find its conscience and to lead the fight against this vicious government.

The aims and objectives of the Labour Left Alliance are not in any way in conflict with the traditions of the Labour Party and I call on the Party to rescind its proscription and also to rescind my notice of auto-expulsion.

Glyn Secker

Comments (31)

  • Dave Putson says:

    So sad that this needed to be said Glyn, but nonetheless, well said this is an excellent response.

    0
    0
  • Chris Wallis says:

    An excellent overview and summation of our current predicament. It could be a letter to the G but they wouldnt publish it.

    0
    0
  • Ieuan Einion says:

    Great letter Glyn.

    I am however minded of the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch.

    “our chosen method is the weaponisation of antisemitism: No! 2 chosen methods: antisemitism – and the so-called people’s vote. No! 3 chosen methods: antisemitism, the people’s vote – and constant reminders that Corbyn is the leader of the IRA, an Iranian journalist and a Russian spy as well as finding time to be a constituency MP…”

    Corbyn was later found guilty and hung, drawn and quartered for stabbing kittens in the face and liking ginger cake.

    No-one remarked that the prosecutor, judge and jury were all the same man; a certain member of The Trilateral Commission.

    Lewis Carroll is currently working on a sequel to “Through the Looking Glass”: “Alice’s Further Adventures on Steroids.”

    0
    0
  • Peter Jenner says:

    Neil Coyle – who has had the Labour whip removed for Sinophobic remarks – called for JVL to be proscribed. This was seen as a step too far even for Evans and Starmer for obvious reasons. Instead, they have cynically decided to pick off JVL members and officers one at a time.

    If, under Corbyn, JLM members had been treated in this way, imagine the furore in the press and elsewhere. But as it is only happening to left-wing Jews it arouses little interest. Nothing must be allowed to contradict the narrative that Starmer is dealing with Labour’s ‘antisemitism problem’.

    Solidarity with Glyn, Leah, Jenny, Naomi and others in the JVL who are being treated in this appalling way. And, with appreciation for the work you do and the stand you take.

    0
    0
  • John Constable says:

    Bang on mate, a concerted effort to destroy the Labour movement from within

    0
    0
  • Alfie Benge says:

    Interesting that you say to the Party:-
    “You are thus applying the proscription retrospectively. I am not aware of any English law in the modern period which has been applied retrospectively. This is a gross violation of the principles of natural justice”.
    It seems Starmer’s time as a Human Rights lawyer taught him which human rights can be very useful to try to obtain justice. The concepts of ‘fairness’ and ‘natural justice’ might well have helped win cases for his clients. So he knows what needs to be done to prevent anyone from challenging the gross injustice of Labour’s current treatment of members . It seems he’s now adjusted the Party rules to remove the possibility of appealing on behalf of fairness or natural justice. They are no longer valid.
    For a human rights lawyer to do that, is truly shocking.

    0
    0
  • steven says:

    Thanks for this posting Glyn. I decided to cancel my subscription a to and therefore membership of the Labour Party. I remain a socialist, trade unionist and cooperator. for me the decision was a difficult one as I had been a member and activist since 1966. But, as you point out, the Labour Party is seemingly supine in the face of radical capitalist legislation affecting the education service, health service and the right to demonstrate. Like many others who feel like me, I have joined the Green Party becasue I want to be active politically and work for a socially progressive future.

    An idea of the extent to which the local Labour Party has declined in the past few years, can be shown when the selection meeting for a newly drawn local authority Ward where I live took place a few weeks ago, only seven people turned up. I know that by now, two of those members have resigned from the Party. They could barely manage to deliver one leaflet per door.

    0
    0
  • Nicola Grove says:

    Glyn well done, but appealing to natural justice is futile, since a rule change by the NEC means that this principle is specifically excluded in cases of expulsion. https://skwawkbox.org/2022/04/06/starmer-abolishes-fairness-and-natural-justice-from-labours-expulsion-rules-in-as-many-words/?shared=email&msg=fail

    0
    0
  • Si Denbigh says:

    Horrendous treatment from the LINO LOTO.

    0
    0
  • Carmen Malarée says:

    Excellent response of Glyn Secker to the Labour party, which is unrecognisable under the leadership of Keir Starmer, a man who calls himself a person of integrity and decency. Decency and integrity are not terms that one would apply to a man who became leader of the party by deceiving its members and by sabotaging the previous leader through shameful means.

    0
    0
  • Brian Dear says:

    Can you (and all the others particularly those retrospectively auto-excluded) claim back your subs from the time when you carried out the retrospectively proscribed action? Personally, I’d like the claim back the donations I made which they then misused but I think that might be trickier.

    0
    0
  • Maureen Lacey says:

    A succinct account of the current unreasonable Governance of the Labour Party. May the voice of reason be heard and acted upon.

    0
    0
  • Timothy Llewellyn says:

    Thank you, Glyn. Now, post-Starmer, the Labour Party can truly be said to be practising antisemitism. For many of us, members who joined when Harold Wilson was PM, the Party has become a travesty, a parody even of what it became under Blair, and we have left in disgust or in countless cases like yours been hounded out by a judicial process Judge Jeffreys would have approved of. Who wants to remain in or even contemplate a party in which socialist principles are anathema and to support equal rights for Palestinians in all of Palestine and Israel is an offence, a sackeable offence, against ” Labour ” policy? I see that despite Starmer lugging Israeli Labour Party apparatchiks round Barnet before the local elections, to burnish his credentials as a crusader against antisemitism, the Zionist cells of Barnet have warned him that he has by no means done enough to root out this scourge of the Party, even under its new Post-Blairite management. As students of Zionism like yourself will know, it’s never enough. The beast feeds on “antisemitism”.

    0
    0
  • Teresa Grover says:

    I am grateful to Glyn Secker for his account of the Party once known as the Labour Party, which of course no longer exsists!
    I am so sorry that he & thousands of people Jews, Muslims etc are being graded into slots of acceptability, many of whom are rejected for one reason only!
    The disapproval of the Jews who relate to the Palestinians captivity in their own country.
    The disapproval of the Muslims & black communties who see that Starmer is more Zionist more Tory than a Labour Opposition Leader should be!
    His choice of advisers is frightening, his followers as MPs once thought of as decent have become aliens with strange attacks on a man they once supported & agreed with, yet now they have rejected Mr.Corbyn!?
    As for calling a Jew the wrong kind of Jew or a self hating Jew is definately how Zionism works!
    Jews for centuries have spent hours discussing debating Judaism, a healthy attitude to a religion that is a mystery to others.
    Then to call a Jew an antisemite is beyond belief especially when many escaped the death camps or the bullet from a Nazi’s gun….
    What an insult to those who survived hatred in such a scale..& that insult comes from a so called Labour Leader married to a Zionist who has no history of being haunted or hunted by Nazis!
    I am no longer a Labour voter & having Starmer as my MP sickens me. The Labour party was founded by the working classes, the poorest who struggled to eat, pay rent in rat infested invested tenements no hot water & heating, they were Irish, Catholics, Jews, Italians, Russians, Poles etc. it was them who created a Labour Party for all.
    It is them that STARMER SHAMES NOW!
    Thankyou Glyn for your contributions to everyone irrespective of race, colour, religion, because blood is red in us all.

    0
    0
  • steve mitchell says:

    At a time when our democracy is being demolished by the extreme Right the Labour Party is enthusiastically imitating them. The Party has always had members with differing opinions across a broad spectrum. That is what makes it great. The lies continue . Blair described the Labour Manifesto as far left in an article I read this morning. There was nothing far left about it. Social democratic governments all over Northern Europe have similar policies in place.

    0
    0
  • Nigel Haines says:

    After the political hatchet job that the Labour Party right-wing led by Starmer has done on Jeremy Corbyn and now Glyn Secker, cheered on by the Tory Party, their press mouthpieces in the Mail, Telegraph & Express, the friends of the far-right Zionist, Israeli, Likud Party, not to mention more than a few political sniggers from the so-called “liberals” of some of the “Guardian” leader writers, who can deny that those unions who have disaffiliated, or are in the process of considering disaffiliation, aren’t correct?
    As the son of long-serving Labour Party councillors and a one time supporter of that political Tony Blair-predecessor Hugh Gaitskell back in the early 1960’s, my experiences in the struggle against rising unemployment in those days opened my eyes to the treachery & political machinations of the Labour right-wing and their efforts to undermine those in the Party who might stand in their way of lucrative political careers, peerages and knighthoods.The only amazing thing is that it’s taken so long for some on the left to reach the same conclusion.
    Perhaps the only light at the end of the tunnel may be that Starmer is found to have broken lock-down regulations, gets prosecuted and resigns as promised, which would put the political cat amongst the Labour Party right-wing, establishment, pigeons good and proper!

    0
    0
  • Alan Wallace says:

    Like quite a few others I wonder why I remain a member. I am not Jewish but have watched with mounting pain how the party has behaved since Keir Starmer’s election as leader, in particular his purges of the left, now apparently focused on the ‘wrong kind of Jews’….(I voted for him, believing that he would retain – as he said he would – much of the 2017/2019 manifestos and work to unite the party. I was wrong.) Glyn’s letter is so concise and clear in presenting the reality of the leadership’s position that I feel the time has come to leave.

    0
    0
  • Paul Smith says:

    Cannot a legal challenge to the retrospective application of rules be mounted? Such a challenge should include any rule purporting to exclude the application of natural justice and fairness.

    0
    0
  • Bernard Grant says:

    So many great points on Glyn’s response mentioned by other commentators, there is no need for me to repeat them.
    As a non Jew, I’m so pleased that I joined JVL, reading the comments from members and the unity gives me such a boost of confidence that, Socialists will eventually fight back and come through these attacks on them. Thank you

    0
    0
  • David Kaye says:

    Excellent summary of the situation

    0
    0
  • Kate Adams says:

    Great letter from Glyn Sekker

    0
    0
  • Miriam Yagud says:

    Solidarity with you Glyn and all the other JVL members wrongly attacked in this vicious campaign against Socialists in the Labour Party.
    You response to their expulsion sets out an accurate account of the witch-hunt they’ve waged for the last 6 years.

    0
    0
  • John Nelson says:

    Shameful, the Labour Party has sunk to its lowest level with a leader harbouring fascist tendencies.

    0
    0
  • Kevin says:

    Totally support your analysis Glyn and JVL-well articulated. Half Jewish myself. Former Pol Ed Officer Selby & Ainsty. Most of Exec walked away is disgust after KS. Still a member by the tips of my fingers! KS and most of front bench team are a disgrace to socialist traditions and perspectives. Labour’s ‘new’ politics is called FEAR and political cleansing? Not sure where to go politically? But Wakefield typifies all that is wrong with Labour! Kev

    0
    0
  • Wojciech Dmochowski says:

    Very well put!
    Sir Keir Starmer’s anti-semitic persecution of Jews in the Labour Party is morally repugnant.

    0
    0
  • Bill Jefferies says:

    Sorry to hear that Glyn. Time to split.

    0
    0
  • Bryan Cook says:

    I am reminded of the mover of the motion on rule changes at last years conference. I quote:
    “We need to pass these changes to bring the rules into line with current practice.” Conference as a whole showed little respect from the stage for ordinary members from the very first day when the Chair failed to call for the show of hands required by standing orders. There was disregard and ignorance of Standing Orders from chairs thr throughput the conference.

    0
    0
  • John Bowley says:

    A superb full response by another vilely persecuted JVL worker, on our behalf, again factual and comprehensive. We all observe how the Party bad guys are worse than useless at what they should be doing for the good of our country.

    0
    0
  • Dr Stephanie Petrie says:

    Thanks for this. My anger towards Starmer & co for the harms they have caused by their single minded careerist ambitions knows no bounds. I admire the persistence of brave socialist and especially Jewish members who have been targeted. I left the Labour Party as I couldn’t stomach the antidemocratic purges.

    0
    0
  • bob cannell says:

    It appears that a number of expelled Jewish socialists have become Green Party activists and some have been elected in preference to the Labour candidates put up against them. One such, a friend of mine, says she enjoys the greater comradeship, living democracy and active pursuit of progressive politics in the Greens. Is this the 21st century version of the ILP replacing the Liberal Party as the representatives of normal people?

    0
    0
  • Margaret West says:

    Has anyone been watching the excellent “RKO Story”
    on BBC4? It is the history of RKO Pictures where last
    week they featured the effects of the McCarthyite
    Un-American Activities Committee on the
    film studio. RKO’s top talents were blacklisted
    and some received prison sentences.

    The crazy way the McCarthyites put
    film people on trial reminded me of the way
    Labour Party members are currently disciplined
    by the GLU. They are beyond irony, even
    proscribing “Labour Against the Witch Hunt” –
    has no-one ever heard of “The Crucible”?

    0
    0

Comments are now closed.