What is the truth about “The Big Lie”?

JVL introduction

Cancellation of the film Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie at the Glastonbury festival is turning out to be just the most high-profile occurrence in a series of acts of censorship. Room bookings by activists wanting to screen the film have been cancelled by Basildon council, a YMCA, pubs in Ludlow, Lewes and Bournemouth, a bookshop in Southampton, and a hall in Tolpuddle, among others – all frightened off by a campaign alleging antisemitic conspiracy theories. In most cases the allegations have originated with the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) or the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).

Some venues, such as the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival run by southwest TUC and Unite the Union offices in Portsmouth and Southampton, seem to have made a political calculation based on their relationship with the Labour Party leadership, which comes under heavy criticism in the film. This is questionable behaviour for labour movement bodies, to say the least.

In many of the other cases, however, we fully understand how baffling and alarming it must be for a venue unfamiliar with the issues raised in the film to be confronted with allegations of antisemitism, conspiracy theories and “Holocaust revisionism”. We are therefore publishing here a deconstruction of the arguments deployed by those trying to have the film banned, as represented by a typical letter sent to a venue where it was due to be screened.

See this pdf file for an anonymised copy of one such letter from the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

From Glastonbury to Tolpuddle, from Ludlow to Lewes, censorship is on the march

by Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie is, in my view, overlong and probably quite tedious for anyone not intimately involved in the internal machinations of the Labour Party. But the film does not deny the existence or importance of antisemitism nor does it blame Jews for what happened to Jeremy Corbyn. It is essentially an attempt to explore how Corbyn’s leadership, which in 2017 won 40 pct of the national vote, achieving the largest increase in the share of the vote by a Labour leader since Clement Attlee in 1945, came to be so comprehensively crushed just two years later. The film shows how the demonisation of Corbyn’s supporters began within the Labour Party as soon as he was elected leader in 2015, because many senior party staff implementing disciplinary procedures were implacably opposed to him.

Unfortunately Jews like me, who have strong views about antisemitism and how to fight it and who reject the idea that supporters of Palestine are inherently motivated by hatred of Jews, find it extremely difficult to get a hearing on this or indeed anything else. I recorded a video about this in November 2020.

There are well-established groups such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Socialists’ Group and Independent Jewish Voices whose existence is barely known, while the Campaign Against Antisemitism has been embraced by mainstream media as if it were entitled to speak for every Jew in the UK.

The CAA was set up in 2014 during Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinans in Gaza and focused on protecting Israel against criticism of its actions. It came to prominence when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in 2015 and found a willing audience wherever Corbyn’s socialist, internationalist message caused consternation. This was the case across almost the entire political spectrum, from right-wing conservatives, through the centre, to what is often called the Blairite wing of the Labour Party. It was definitely the case among mainstream Jewish organisations which have loyalty to Israel at their core, such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD), and pro-Israel groups which are not necessarily Jewish such as Labour Friends of Israel and UK Lawyers for Israel. Also very important in the context of factional warfare in the Labour Party is the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) which fronted many of the attacks on Corbyn and his supporters. It was because the JLM claimed to represent all Jews in the Labour Party that my group, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), was set up in 2017 to promote discussion of alternative views.

The BoD wrote to Glastonbury and then publicly celebrated their success in getting the film banned at the festival. The CAA also claimed its share of the credit.

The claims made about the film require detailed examination. Let’s take apart a typical CAA letter paragraph by paragraph.

1. Right from the start, the CAA’s description of itself is deceptive. There is a strong case for arguing that it is a politically partisan organisation posing as an education charity, using dubious methods to denounce as antisemites groups and individuals, mainly on the left, who campaign for justice for Palestinians. There is evidence of this in a video posted by a leading CAA official  immediately after the December 2019 general election, claiming “We slaughtered Corbyn.”  The organisation’s use of data is seemingly calculated to ramp up fear among British Jews. Their conclusions don’t tally with those of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and have been criticised by Keith Kahn-Harris writing in the conservative, pro-Israel Jewish Chronicle. The Charity Commission is looking into challenges raised by JVL and others to the CAA’s charitable status. Much earlier on, we were concerned about its mode of operation. I wrote this piece about it in 2017.
2. The CAA claims that it has been “approached by a number of concerned members of the Jewish Community”. This is a frequent tactic used to intimidate unsuspecting venues, telling them that hosting such and such performer or event would upset “The Jewish Community” – treating Jews as a monolithic bloc, which we are not. I was involved in such a case recently, when a small community venue was threatened with prosecution under the Equality Act for having hosted a particular performer. A number of Jewish people in the area rallied round, encouraging the venue to hold their ground, and eventually the threats were dropped. Unfortunately many venues lacking that kind of support have given in to threats, cancelling performances and discussions.
3. It is not true that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found the Labour leadership “to have unlawfully harassed and intimidated Jews.” The commission did not find that the party was institutionally antisemitic, as is often said. Its main finding was directed at two individual party members, both of whom are taking their case to judicial review on the ground that the behaviour complained of did not constitute harassment or intimidation of Jewish people. (Note that the CAA letter refers exclusively to its own reports, not to independent sources. In our assessment of the EHRC judgement we cite Geoffrey Bindman KC, an eminent Jewish human rights lawyer, quoted at length in this article.)
4. The CAA letter asserts that the film promotes a conspiratorial narrative, “premised on the notion” that Jewish people dishonestly allege racism “in order to further their own secretive agenda”. The film does not say any such thing. Its premise is that antisemitism is a pernicious form of racism and must be taken seriously, but there is clear evidence that large numbers of allegations against Labour Party members are – to coin a phrase – “weaponised”. For evidence of this, see Al Jazeera’s detailed documentary series The Labour Files. Allegations are often disingenuous if not malicious, made to gain factional advantage – not for Jewish people but for the right over the left. The examples in the CAA letter fall into that category. Very often they rely on guilt by association – the film must be antisemitic because some of the people who appear in it have previously been accused of antisemitism, even if those allegations were baseless.
5. The letter says the film relies upon “inflammatory figures” with histories of conspiratorial rhetoric. But this is no more than the writer’s opinion. Significantly, they omit to mention that nearly all the alleged “inflammatory figures” are themselves Jewish.

• Jackie Walker is Jewish and Black. Some Jewish people, some of her ancestors among them, were involved in the slave trade. She was indeed expelled from the Labour Party, but not because of what she’d said about that. The official reason given for her expulsion was “bringing the party into disrepute”. The real reason appears to have been her refusal to stay silent about the weaponization of antisemitism.

• Ken Loach, one of the greatest humanitarian film makers of the last 60 years, did not refuse to denounce Holocaust denial. He refused to denounce an Israeli Jew, Miko Peled, speaking at a meeting Ken knew nothing about, whose off the cuff remark about free speech in discussing Israel and Palestine was taken out of context and used to attack the entire left in the Labour Party. An academic who studied what had happened said the party conference was being treated as if it were a Nazi rally.
• Graham Bash is Jewish, from an Orthodox family. He was expelled after 50 years in the Labour Party. His crime was to have signed a petition in January 2020 organised by a group proscribed by the party in 2021. Proscription itself is open to challenge, deserving a mention from Martin Forde KC in his detailed report commissioned by the leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer. (Forde has discussed the disappointing reception his report received in a filmed interview.)
• Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is described in the letter as an “antisemitism denial group and sham Jewish representatives”. This is a partisan view – a serious distortion of what we actually are.
• Professor Moshe Machover is an Israeli Jew, an expert on the history of Israel/Palestine. He was expelled in 2017 because of an article he had written in a left-wing publication titled Anti-Zionism does not equal Antisemitism. It included a quotation from a leading Nazi, Reinhard Heydrich in 1935, expressing sympathy for Zionism. Machover’s case attracted considerable support from across the UK and wider and his expulsion was reversed. The disciplinary case against him revolved around his links to the group which published his article. There was no allegation of antisemitism and there is absolutely no justification for the CAA calling him a “Holocaust revisionist”. (Machover has since been threatened yet again with expulsion for associating with one of the leftwing groups banned by the Labour Party.)
• Alexei Sayle is a well-known Jewish comedian, writer and broadcaster who narrates the film. He had a public row in 2014 on Radio2’s Jeremy Vine show with Emma Barnett who accused pro-Palestinian activists of antisemitism when they were criticising Israel for killing hundreds of children in Gaza.

6. I hope you can see how the accusations made in the letter from the CAA are not what they seem on the surface. The paragraph beginning “Propaganda from antisemitism deniers…” is no different. It twists and distorts the reality:

• It says the film “denies that antisemitism in the Labour Party was a serious problem.” Many people believe Labour had, and still has, a problem with racism of all kinds, including antisemitism, just like every other institution in Britain, but that it did not have a uniquely appalling record that made Jewish people unsafe, as alleged by the CAA and others of like mind. The film says no more than what large numbers of people understand to be the case.
• It says the film alleges “a nefarious campaign”. Well there is little doubt that there was a campaign to bring down Corbyn and that there is now a campaign to drive out his supporters. The evidence for this is so glaringly obvious that it is at last being picked up by mainstream commentators such as Michael Crick.
• It says the film alleges a campaign “orchestrated against someone who allowed antisemitism to run rampant.” This is another way of repeating the same unfounded allegations. There’s a book called Bad News for Labour by five scholars, two of them Jewish, which analyses how the myth of rampant antisemitism took hold of the popular imagination.
• It repeats the erroneous charge that the party was found to have broken the law. See our point above about the EHRC.
• It says screening the film will alienate the venue’s Jewish patrons. This kind of evidence-free assertion is often made as an argument for censorship, for example to persuade a London hospital to take down a display of Gazan children’s art, although there had in fact been no complaints from Jewish patients.
• It says showing the film will alienate those who stand against racism. If only the CAA was part of a genuine campaign to combat the racism prevalent in our society! I think it’s clear from the evidence I’ve presented that CAA does not fall into that camp. On the contrary, they are trying to ban a film that active campaigners against racism of all kinds want to be shown, so that they can learn about the experiences of the staunch anti-racists who appear in it.

7. Glastonbury’s decision to cancel the film screening seems to have followed lobbying of financial sponsors by the CAA as well as calls for a ban from the Board of Deputies. The fact that one venue has been misled into an act of censorship does not mean that others should follow suit.

8. The CAA’s offer to “discuss this further” is intriguing. Repeated offers from “our side” to debate the fundamental issues at stake have been rejected outright by the “other side”. If venue managers could facilitate respectful debate on a range of relevant topics, such as how antisemitism should be defined; who decides if there should be limits placed on what may be said in defence of the Palestinian people; who determines what is a legitimate Jewish point of view; how can negative perceptions of Jewish people be combatted alongside other forms of racism and discrimination, etc etc, that would be extremely valuable.

Some well-meaning venue managers have suggested that we should warn them in advance when booking events we know could attract controversy. In all honesty I must say we have become accustomed over recent years to keeping our events secret, genuinely fearful of cancellation or actual physical disruption. We are now at the point where censorship is so far advanced that government plans to outlaw boycott as a form of protest are attracting opposition even from some Conservatives! The only hope may very well be for event organisers and venue managers to cooperate on taking a firm stand in defence of freedom of speech. We should work together from now on to resist attempts to curtail freedom of expression.