The Lady Vanishes: the Mystery of the Missing Chakrabarti Report

To all members of the NEC

21st December 2017

The Chakrabarti Report has mysteriously and without explanation disappeared from the Labour Party’s website.

The Chakrabarti Report into antisemitism and other forms of racism, commissioned by Jeremy Corbyn, is an important document that offers the Labour Party a constructive way forward on a contentious topic. It provides the best blueprint for dealing with racism and antisemitism in the party, and for disciplinary procedures that respect natural justice.

Jewish Voice for Labour has been concerned for some time at the lack of progress with implementation of the Report’s recommendations. We are now 18 months on, and yet Party officials are still operating without reference to its recommendations, which operationalise the principles of natural justice along with due process, transparency and proportionality.

The underhand removal of the Report, with no reason given, just as a new wave of unreformed disciplinary hearings has been initiated can only add to members’ anxieties about the commitment to justice within our Party. This is particularly the case because the current NCC hearings violate virtually every one of the Report’s process recommendations.

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You can download the vanishing Chakrabarti Inquiry Report here

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There will be surprise and, we anticipate, outrage as it becomes more widely known in the party that the Chakrabarti report has suddenly disappeared without explanation. We are investigating further how this happened and will inform Labour Party members of our findings on our JVL website.  We know that motions are already being passed calling for full implementation of the Report’s recommendations.

This is no way to proceed while in parallel the Party is embarking on a much-welcomed Democracy Review.

The steps that are necessary to regain the confidence of the membership in the party’s disciplinary processes are:

  • The speedy reposting of the Chakrabarti Report on the party’s website;
  • The adoption by the NEC of the Report’s recommendations for a disciplinary procedure based on transparency, natural justice, due process, and fairness, and their implementation in all continuing and future disciplinary cases be implemented; and
  • The explicit inclusion of the Party’s disciplinary procedures in stage 2 of the Democracy Review

Please let us know what actions you will be taking to help address our serious concerns.

Yours sincerely,

Leah Levane
Co Chair, Jewish Voice for Labour

cc. Shami Chakrabarti
Iain McNicol
John McDonnell
Laura Murray

 

 

Comments (9)

  • Jackie Walker says:

    Could you keep us up to date as to whether you receive any response?

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  • John Spanyard says:

    Well done JVL!! There can be only one explanation for the disappearance of the Chakrabati Report from the party’s website – it is an underhand attempt to reframe the party’s narrative on what constitutes natural justice in terms of disciplinary procedures, ahead of the somewhat dubious proceedings against Tony Greenstein & Jackie Walker, who like Moshe Machover, as Jewish members of the party have quite ludicrously been accused of anti-semitism. There has been quite enough of this sort of nonsense – you cannot pretend quite fatuously, that if the report disappears off the website, it somehow does not exist and was never accepted by the leadership as policy – the membership are not fooled and will not stand for it. The question of dubious persecution of Jewish members aside the more pressing question for Mr McNicholl and the Compliance Unit is why they are not investigating the underhand activities of Emma Picken and Euean Phillips whose activity on Twitter behind spoof profiles stirring up genuinely false allegations of anti-semitism against other members of the party, in league with the spurious “charity” Labour Against Anti-Semitism has been ably exposed by Greg Hadfield.
    https://medium.com/@GregHadfield/revealed-the-labour-party-activists-behind-the-anti-semitism-smears-683f3d8c890f

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  • ALAN MADDISON says:

    Thanks for sending this well articulated and pertinent request to NEC members. Their apparent unwillingness to implement the much needed recommendations of the Chakrabarti report is of great concern to many Labour members. How on earth can Labour offer fairness and justice to our wider society yet not deliver the same for its 600 000 members?

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  • This is a point that I have made on more than one occasion in response to the National Constitutional Committee which will be hearing my case in January. Naturally there has been no response to this and I have also put up a link to the Report.

    I think the reason for its disappearance is quite obvious. The current wave of expulsion hearings are not being held in accordance with any notion of natural justice as Chakrabarti argued they should be, hence why the Report has disappeared. It is reminiscent of the methodology of Stalinism in which inconvenient truths simply disappeared.

    It is ironic that I had to go to the courts of bourgeois justice in order to obtain an injunction recently preventing the holding of my hearing without reasonable notice.

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  • Pat Sheerin says:

    Thank you for speaking for all LP members who want fairness and justice in our party.

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  • Kriss Fearon says:

    Coincidentally our CMC passed a motion earlier this month on finding out what has happened with this report and why there has been no news on its implementation. Since it changes the disciplinary procedure and complaints procedure, it affects every member – and it also contained many other sensible suggestions. I hope there’s a good explanation for this.

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  • Jenny says:

    It hasn’t disappeared! It’s still there. See the link posted by Chris L above. There’s nothing underhand going on, so try not to spread false information. There is enough of that going on without having to create your own.

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  • Richard says:

    See an elaboration on all this in “The great Chakrabarti Report mystery continued…” posted today on this website at http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/labour-party-organisation/great-chakrabarti-report-mystery-continued/

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