JVL Submission to EHRC on Labour’s Action Plan – a Crowd Funding appeal

To request that the EHRC takes action on the Labour Party’s application of the Action Plan to remedy the disproportionate targeting of Jewish member

Please donate here

 

JVL submitted a letter of complaint to the EHRC via our solicitors – Bindmans LLP – making it clear that the Labour Party Action Plan in response to the EHRC report has failed to consider or reflect the views of the breadth of ‘Jewish stakeholders’ and Party policy “would appear to be having the opposite effect to that which was intended; namely the exacerbation as opposed to elimination of the mistreatment of Jewish members by the Party”.

We pointed out that “the Party is disproportionately targeting and disciplining Jewish members that question the Party’s interpretation of antisemitism, as compared with non-Jewish members”.

The EHRC have responded: As you are aware, the Action Plan requires the Labour Party to take steps to implement the recommendations set out in our Report and they are required by law to comply with the Action Plan. We are actively monitoring the implementation and progress of the Action Plan. … In the meantime, we would welcome any further submissions from your client in respect of the matters within the Action Plan”.

We are now making this further submission (link below).  JVL points out that there have, up to now, at least  41 Jewish members investigated for antisemitism with 49  investigations (some Jews have faced more than one investigation ) and 5 auto-exclusions as a population share. As far as we can ascertain over five times more Jewish than non-Jewish Party members have been investigated in relation to allegations of antisemitism.

There is a particular concentration on visible JVL activists as ten of the current eleven JVL Executive officers have now been accused of ‘antisemitism’ and 38 of the 41 Jewish members investigated are members of JVL.  

This has resulted in a level of persecution many times higher for JVL officers and  for rank-and-file members of JVL than for non-Jewish party members.

JVL considers that the disproportionate targeting of Jews, with the spurious and offensive charges of ‘antisemitism’ arise from the Party’s recognition that our questioning of the Party’s interpretation carries some weight.   There is some indication that this is a planned policy of purging dissenting Jewish voices.

The Party’s deliberate attempts to exclude JVL from its ongoing engagement with Jewish communities is deeply unfair and amounts to discrimination of a subset of Jews on the basis, for instance, of their philosophical and political beliefs regarding Israel and Palestine and their concerns about the Party’s interpretation of antisemitism. Such potential discrimination, arising after the EHRC investigation and Report, is indicative of the Party’s increased hostility towards certain Jewish Party members, which is directly contrary to the intended outcome of the Report.

An additional form of this targeting of Jews is the quoting or sharing of articles by Jews as evidence of antisemitism in members’ charges.   (See Why on earth is citing me antisemitic? – asks Jewish blogger Robert A.H. Cohen)

JVL has made it clear in our document What is – and what is not – antisemitic misconduct that conduct is antisemitic only if it manifests ‘prejudice, hostility or hatred against Jews as Jews’.

The Party has ignored this document and instead currently has three guidance note on antisemitisms – the Code in Appendix 9 Code of Conduct: Antisemitism and Other Forms of Racism the NEC Code of Conduct on antisemitism and the IHRA. These last two documents run consecutively in the Complaints Handling Handbook with no explanation of how these forms of guidance can be applied. The Party has also ignored the important Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, supported by over 200 scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies, which simply and effecively states:Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).”

The Party is applying a ‘blanket’ charge that is legally weak if not unprovable: “Undermines the Party’s ability to campaign against AS”.  This applies where the only ‘offence’ is questioning the public perception of the scale of complaints of antisemitism against LP members. But more widely this is applied to any criticism or questioning of the Party’s so called campaign. It is frequently accompanied by other charges and often the correspondence is aggressive in tone from the start.

We intend to draw the EHRC’s attention to the Party’s disproportionate targeting of Jewish members in relation to the Action Plan and request the EHRC take action on this harsh treatment of so many Jewish members.

Engaging legal advisors to put forward our submission is costly but we think the principles are worth fighting for.

We are aware that there are many demands on our supporters’ pockets. But we ask that you donate to this action if you can and share the link to this page widely with all your relevant networks.

Thank you.

Please donate here

 

Links to relevant articles on JVL website:

JVL: Third Submission to the EHRC

How Labour’s claim of countering antisemitism has resulted in a purge of Jews

Supplementary Submission by JVL to the EHRC and the Forde Inquiry

 

 

Comments (6)

  • Stephen Richards says:

    The basic premise of the EHRC that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn was anti-Semitic, was an abomination. A politically motivated ideology supported by powerful media organisations & institutions, designed to remove all traces of ‘Socialism’ from any political agenda in Great Britain. The consequences of this can be seen by observing the BBC News & Current Affairs programmes & any ‘expert’ panelists or journalists it may use to illustrate & support its pontifications. Only ‘Murdoch’ trained journalists need apply. Jeremy Corbyn, along with any of his Socialist supporters, have disappeared like Julian Assange. No platform on BBC nor any MSM, only social media allowed. Richard Sharpe (Chairman of BBC) just prior to his appointment, made a massive donation to the Tory Party. Just how independent is it?

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  • John Bowley says:

    JVL’s appeal for funding for sadly necessary legal assistance to persuade/push the EHRC to do its public duty about the oppressive anti-socialist antisemitism coming from the right-wing management of the Labout Party is romping on.

    Please all continue to support JVL financially. I am going to donate again.

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  • Doug says:

    Your not wrong on anything you rely on except the legal action
    The idea that you are going to force the EHRC to change the actions of Temporary Embarrassment and all those behind him is a long shot
    Concentrate on getting rid of them both

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  • Allan Howard says:

    Slightly off topic…..

    By chance I just came across another example of the CAA lying and twisting the truth in a piece entitled ‘Chris Williamson’s letter of resignation from Labour reads like manifesto against Jews’, posted on the 7th of November 2019. I mean the whole piece is one big black propaganda lie of course, or to be precise, a ‘false opinion’, but they just couldn’t resist throwing in the following falsehood:

    Back in February, when Mr Williamson was first suspended, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn leapt to his defence, saying: “Chris Williamson is a very good, very effective Labour MP. He’s a very strong anti-racist campaigner. He is not antisemitic in any way.”

    Chris was suspended on Feb 27, more-or-less one month AFTER Jeremy said what he said in relation to Chris. On a visit to Derbyshire (where Chris was an MP) at the end of January, Jeremy was asked by a local reporter if he had any concerns about Chris regards anti-semitism, and THAT is when Jeremy defended Chris.

    Here’s a link to the article on the DerbyshireLive website, posted on Jan 31st.

    And here’s a link to the CAA piece.

    Needless to say, the leader of a party would NEVER comment about anyone who has been suspended from the party and is under investigation, but the folks at the CAA just lurve twisting everything they possibly can, AND deceiving their readers every-which-way they can think of.

    NB Had the Jewish Chronicle not covered the initial story (on Jan 31st) – and I believe they were the only paper that did – I dare say the CAA would have ‘reported’ Jeremy as having said that AT the time Chris was suspended!

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  • Allan Howard says:

    I just did a search on the CAAs website to see if they reported Jeremy Corbyn defending Chris Williamson (at the time) when he was in Derbyshire at the end of January 2019, and couldn’t find anything. But one of the dozens of results that came up was just entitled ‘Jeremy Corbyn’, so I clicked on it to see what it was about, and if it was mentioned in the ‘article’ and, as such, came across the following (which is numbered 17 in the list):

    On 2nd May 2019, responding to a letter from the head of a Jewish charity prompted by the revelation of the incident detailed in [6], Mr Corbyn wrote: “I am deeply saddened that the mischievous representation of my foreword to the book will have caused real stress within the Jewish community.” He continued: “This accusation is the latest in a series of equally ill-founded accusations of anti-Jewish racism that Labour’s political opponents have made against me. I note that the Hobson story was written by a Conservative Party peer in a newspaper whose editorial policy, and owner, have long been hostile to Labour. At a time when Jewish communities in the UK, and indeed throughout Europe, feel under attack, it is a matter of great regret that the issue of antisemitism is often politicised in this way.”

    I have no idea if Jeremy’s response was reported by the MSM at the time, and I certainly don’t recall seeing it (and I will shortly do a search to determine if – to some extent or other – it was), but it would be highly surprising if it wasn’t, AND Jeremy attacked and vilified by all the usual suspects, as such.

    https://antisemitism.org/politics/labour/jeremy-corbyn/

    PS I just did a search in both the Guardian and the Mail, and the letter, and Jeremy’s response isn’t mentioned in any of the results. But in the process, I came across the following in a Mail article:

    Labour’s Margaret Hodge said: ‘For Corbyn to praise a book packed full of antisemitic conspiracies is disgusting. Ignoring this book’s blatant antisemitism is inexcusable & part of his shameful record of condoning antisemitic hate’.

    It amounted to ten lines in a 400-page book….. And the Mail put her ‘condemnation’ FIRST in the article, and for the obvious reason!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6978451/Corbyn-faces-fresh-anti-Semitism-accusations-endorsement-book-claimed-Jews-run-banks.html

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  • Allan Howard says:

    So I have now just found what I was looking for a bit further down the page (in section 18d):

    On 31st January 2019, it was reported by Derbyshire Live that Mr Corbyn had said of then Labour MP for Derby North, Chris Williamson: “Chris Williamson is a very good, very effective Labour MP. He’s a very strong anti-racist campaigner. He is not antisemitic in any way.” Mr Williamson had repeatedly been accused of extreme insensitivity towards the Jewish community because of his support for high-profile members suspended or expelled for antisemitism….. Mr Williamson was suspended from the Party on 27th February 2019.

    The ‘article’ appears to cover up until the end of October 2020 when Jeremy was suspended, and right at the bottom of the page does in fact say that ‘This case was last updated on 29th October 2020.’

    It seems highly unlikely that the CAA wasn’t aware of what Jeremy said about Chris at the time given that it was reported in the Jewish Chronicle (on Jan 31st), and maybe they DID post an article about it at the time, but if they DID, it didn’t come up in the search I did on their website. But if they DIDN’T, then it’s rather odd that they didn’t to say the least!

    Here’s the link again:

    https://antisemitism.org/politics/labour/jeremy-corbyn/

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