Starmer in ‘denial’ over evidence of racism and misogyny among Labour officials

Illustration: Steve Bell/The Guardian, 29 October 2020

JVL Introduction

It is a year today since the Labour Party internal report was leaked. It claimed sabotage  by Labour party bureaucrats of the party’s attempt to win the 2017 general election.

it also suggested widespeard racism and misogyny within the Party machine.

The very next day Starmer and Rayner announced an independent investigation would examine, among other things, the “wider culture and practices” [in the Labour Party] that the leaked report refers to at great length.

This Inquiry, led by Martin Forde QC, was orginally due to report in July 2020.

We are still waiting…

This article was originally published by the Morning Star on Sun 11 Apr 2021. Read the original here.

Starmer in ‘denial’ over evidence of racism and misogyny among Labour officials

Jewish Voice for Labour hits out at the party leader on the first anniversary of the damning Forde report

JEWISH Voice for Labour (JVL) has accused Sir Keir Starmer of being in “denial” over evidence of racism and misogyny among Labour officials on the first anniversary of a damning leaked report.

The group said that Labour supporters were becoming alienated by the leadership’s continuing “unwillingness” to pursue the report’s shocking revelations, which included senior party officials exchanging abusive remarks about Jeremy Corbyn’s team while seeking to sabotage the party’s attempt to win the 2017 general election.

The report, leaked on April 12 last year, looked at thousands of internal emails and WhatsApp chat groups between officials in the governance and legal unit (GLU), the department that handles complaints, and other senior staff in Labour HQ.

It found a litany of abusive, derogatory, misogynistic and bullying remarks made about the former leader, his team and supporters, including allegations of racism against black Labour MPs from some party staff.

It was written amid the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s probe into allegations of anti-semitism in the party, which found that there had been political inference into complaints of discrimination against members.

JVL’s Mike Cushman said that the GLU report demonstrated the “strange contradictions at the heart of Labour’s right wing.

“It demonstrated an enthusiasm to embrace and endorse any accusation of anti-semitism, no matter how flimsy or contrived, against sympathisers with the Corbyn project,” he said.

“[It also showed] an unwillingness to pursue a number of egregious cases of truly unacceptable behaviour alongside a denial of even the strongest evidence of racism and misogyny among the pre-Corbyn bureaucrats and parliamentary opponents of the mass of [party] members.

“The reaction of the party to set up the never-reporting Forde inquiry and to prohibit black and Asian members from speaking out about their everyday experience of the party compounded the problem and alienated supporters from communities the party exists to represent.”

The Forde probe, set up to investigate how the GLU report was leaked in the first place, has been hit by delays.

Nine black Labour MPs, including former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, wrote to Sir Keir in February to warn that the “indefinite delay” to the investigation risked giving a strong impression that the party was “not taking anti-black racism seriously.”

Labour has been contacted for comment.

Comments (11)

  • John Bowley says:

    Oh bravo, again, JVL! Thank you, again, dear comrades.

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  • Ian Hickinbottom says:

    The Fforde inquiry will never report or if it does it will be similar to the recent Sewell report. Starmer is not interested in racism or misogyny or any other form of abuse. He is just interested in AS or anything the BoD tell him is AS. My membership lapses just after the Senedd election, (I’m only campaigning because our candidate is a friend), and I will be corresponding to inform as to the reasons I’m leaving the party, not that he’ll care.

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  • John Bowley says:

    I believe that the party hegemony has reinstated some paid staff who were suspended after information about disloyalty and racism appeared in the report but continues to suspend loyal party members who have volutarily worked honestly and well for our Party and have done nothing wrong.

    Starmer has observably been far more concerned that the report was leaked than he has been about the undenied highly disquieting revelations.

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  • Hazel Davies says:

    Starmer has flouted all the recommendations of the EHRC report with blatant political interference in disciplinary cases. He is thoroughly dishonest. He lied cynically to get himself elected and has reneged on every pledge he made. There is no difference between him and Johnson. God help Britain !

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  • Anthony Baldwin says:

    You only have to think of the consequences of this Report becoming public to realise that it would mark the end of both Starmer and Evans as well as those named as offenders.
    They have cost the Party an estimated £600,000 and this would have to be recouped via the Courts. This is of course their second payout since the Al Jazeera/Panorama group had already been paid along with McNicol when they were ‘retired’ when McNicol departed.
    Since these payments were made at the behest of Starmer and Evans and others qualified to do so then they would be seen to be guilty of gross financial misconduct and would have to say goodbye to the Party.

    Perhaps a coordinated shut down of the Labour web site might illustrate the fact that they will have to take action either by doing what they should as a result of their actions or putting into operation Angel Raynor’s promise to expel thousands and thousands of Party Members who do know the difference between anti-semitism and condemnation of an Apartheid State.

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  • Ian Kemp says:

    I GUESS ITS PAR FOR THE Course with Starmer and his backers. But it will eventually come out in some form. Interesting to see how the Guardian/Observer and Freedland and Cohen will try to wriggle out of the evidence that flatly contradicts their flawed narrative that Corbyn and the left were all antisemitic.

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  • Emma says:

    Thankyou for this informative article,the main stream media are not interested it seems in updating the public on this subject.
    Or the fact that Starmer has not reinstated Mr.Corbyn back into the Labour party.I do not like the way the Labour party is behaving under Kier Starmer.I don’t recognise it anymore.

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  • Myra Sands says:

    Thanks to JVL for reprinting this important article, and thanks also to Matt Trinder and The Morning Star for the original. This wonderful daily paper, owned by its readers, for ‘Peace and Socialism’, should be much more widely supported than it is.

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  • James Dickins says:

    “Interesting to see how the Guardian/Observer and Freedland and Cohen will try to wriggle out of the evidence that flatly contradicts their flawed narrative that Corbyn and the left were all antisemitic.”
    _______________________________________________

    They will do what the Guardian/Observer always does, when news comes out which contradicts its narrative – ignore it altogether.

    Facts are only sacred at the Guardian when blessed by its own high priests of acceptability – and comment definitely, definitely is not free.

    A good example is is the Guardian’s complete failure to report on the now almost incontrovertible evidence that the Douma chemical weapons attack (if it was that at all) was not carried out by the Assad regime. See:
    https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/14/5-former-opcw-officials-join-prominent-voices-to-call-out-syria-cover-up/
    https://thegrayzone.com/tag/douma/
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/chemical-weapons+syria

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  • Alan Stanton says:

    “Oh what a tangled web they weave
    When Forde they start and then they leave.

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  • bob cannell says:

    This leadership gets worse and worse. A fish stinks from the head down? Well we’re well into the middle by now. We really are living in the Age of Shamelessness. The filthy brown water between this leadership and the previous worst (Kinnock in my experience) is getting wider and wider. Im staying until they throw me out (they will be reading this) or I get to vote them out.

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