The shortcomings of the EHRC Report

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Contents summary

A: The Background to the Report

  1. The Terms of Reference
  2. Absence of history and context
  3. The leaked GLU report
  4. Political parties are political

B: The Report’s Legal Findings and their limitations

  1. Agents of the party, acting unlawfully
  2. Cases of indirect discrimination/political interference
  3. Training failures

C: The Report’s omissions

  1. The specific nature of the hurt that Jews are found to have suffered.
  2. Jeremy Corbyn
  3. The uncritical use of the term “the Jewish community
  4. The nature of the evidence
  5. Racism in general
  6. An acknowledgment of the role of the media in inflaming Labour’s crisis

D: Conclusions


A: The Background to the Report

1. The Terms of Reference

The course and outcome of the investigation flowed from its unsatisfactory Terms of Reference (ToR). We raised this with the Commission on 23 July 2019 and again in our first submission on 30 July 2019 which is available on our website.

Most importantly, the ToR failed to comply with S20 and sch. 2 of the Equality Act 2006 which governs such Inquiries. These require a clear specification of the suspected unlawful acts in order to prevent fishing expeditions and post facto allegations of unlawful behaviour.

Instead, the first paragraph of the ToR refers without further specification to “unlawful acts in relation to its members and/or applicants for membership and/or associates”. These acts are nowhere further defined. In the remainder of the ToR the phrase “unlawful acts” is used 4 more times, with no further specification.

The Inquiry was therefore open precisely to being the fishing expedition the 2006 Equality Act had wanted to rule out.

Despite pointing out the flawed legal basis of the ToR, we received no response from the Commission

2. Absence of history and context

The descriptive material in the report is largely accurate and some is helpful, in particular its highlighting of the injustice of the process. However, it lacks history and context. It may be that the EHRC felt that some of the context was outside its remit but, if so, it should have acknowledged the limitations of excluding this and acknowledged that this would affect the robustness of the conclusions drawn from the account.

3. The leaked GLU report

The report repeatedly notes improvements to the processes in the recent past but fails to highlight that this followed the departure of Iain McNichol and the arrival of Jennie Formby as General Secretary. No credit is given for Jennie Formby’s hard work and steps to implement at least some of the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Inquiry; nor is there mention of the debilitating effect of the civil war that raged within the Party, revealed spectacularly in the leaked report into the workings of GLU (hereafter referred to as the GLU report).

The Commission acknowledges receiving and reading this Report but says it did not seek the underlying data behind that report. Nor does it satisfactorily explain why it was not sought. This is an astonishing admission, since the GLU Report had been prepared precisely as a submission to the EHRC and contains much material evidence bearing precisely on the issues the EHRC was charged with investigating.

Despite this, the EHRC Report frequently relies on the GLU Report at various points when it supports the arguments it advances (on pp. 18, 52, 69, 70, 72, 85 and others) but not where it contradicts them.

It would seem that the vast majority of complaints were raised by third parties and not by individuals who had suffered disadvantage or harassment. These third parties suffered less from the delays and other inadequacies in the process than the respondents who had their reputations, psychological well-being and in some cases their professional careers at stake. The Report itself acknowledges that those complained against were severely disadvantaged by the poor procedures.

4. Political parties are political

The EHRC Report explores the activities of a political party. Political parties are not only political in relation to the world outside their organisation, they are also highly politicised inside. Groups of varying outlooks compete for authority and different actors contest, or undermine, the actions of others in the light of what they believe to be in the best interests of the Party or for personal advancement or both.

The extent of the rebellion against the then leader of the party has no precedent in the history of the Labour Party, or in any other party to the best of our knowledge, and it framed the context of the EHRC investigation itself. The report needed to have acknowledged this context even if it was outside its remit to explore it. The absence of this narrative prevents the reader from understanding the purpose and intent of actions and leads to a presumption of antisemitism as no other possible explanation is allowed.

 

B: The Report’s Legal Findings and their limitations

The significance of the findings of unlawful acts is that without them the EHRC would have no power to impose the changes in the practices of the Labour party which are set out in the notice. Of course, the Labour Party might wish to make such changes voluntarily but findings of illegal conduct and the imposition of legal obligations carry with them reputational damage, which we argue is undeserved.

The findings of illegality do not sit easily with the Report’s conclusions about the sample of cases that were investigated.

The investigation received some 230 complaints from the CAA alone, and an unidentified number from others. It investigated 70 of these complaints of which 59 were of alleged antisemitic references on social media. It is not stated whether all those accused of antisemitism were members of the Party and if so how this was established. But overall the investigation found only two cases of harassment related to race, and two cases of indirect discrimination.

These few findings, even if correct, do not indicate a high level of antisemitism in the party.

The report summarises In Annex 1 (pp.102-103) the three areas in which it holds the Party to have committed “unlawful acts”.

1. Agents of the party, acting unlawfully

The scope of the EHRC’s investigation powers is limited to investigating whether a person has committed an unlawful act. The ToR makes it clear that the basis of the investigation is the suspicion that the Labour party may have itself, and/or through employees or agents, committed unlawful acts.

The report finds that the Party “committed unlawful harassment of its members, contrary to section 101(4)(a) of the Equality Act 2010, related to race (Jewish ethnicity), through the acts of its agents Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley”.

One of these was a former local councillor and the other a member of the National Executive Committee. The Labour Party could only be liable for their actions if they were agents of the party acting within the Party’s authority. There is no evidence that they had or claimed such authority, nor that the party had given them authority to make statements on the Party’s behalf.

The EHRC explains who within the Party are its agents on Page 13 of the Report. . The extensive list of those the Commission deems to be agents, even extending down to Branch committee members, would mean that any voluntary organisation would be liable for the actions of hundreds or even tens of thousands of its members.

But the EHRC states: The Labour Party accepts that the individuals above are authorised to act as its agents when they are carrying out the responsibilities given to them by the Labour Party Rule Book, whether stated explicitly or implied.

There is no evidence that the two people named had or claimed such authority, nor that the party had given them authority to make statements on the Party’s behalf.

The alleged acts of harassment consisted of statements asserted to be antisemitic made in one case on social media and in the other in interviews which were subsequently made public. Both of the individuals were disciplined by the Party for making the statements. In one case the member was expelled for making the statements and in the other the member was disciplined but resigned before punishment was determined. The fact that the allegedly antisemitic statements led directly to disciplinary action by the Party contradicts the claim that they were made with the Party’s authority. If they were authorised the two members would have had a complete defence to the disciplinary charges.

2. Cases of indirect discrimination/political interference

With regard to the second area of “unlawful acts”, the report states:

“the Labour Party operated two separate relevant unlawful practices or policies: first, the overall practice or policy operating from March 2016 to May 2019 in which LOTO or the leadership was involved in ‘politically sensitive’ complaints; and secondly, the specific and formal practice or policy of referring all antisemitism complaints to LOTO in March–April 2018.

a) The two findings of indirect discrimination, both relating to political interference, are of doubtful validity. Indirect discrimination, as the report sets out, requires the existence of a policy or practice which, without justification, disadvantages members of a particular protected group. There is no evidence to support the finding that Jews, who clearly are a protected group, are disadvantaged by the two policies or practices identified in the report. There is no evidence that the policies or practices were applied exclusively to Jews. And, secondly, there is no evidence that either policy or practice was detrimental or damaging to those to whom it was applied

b) It may be that the “Party’s practice or policy of Political Interference… in antisemitism complaints” was poor practice but to be unlawful it is surely necessary to establish that it is, in this case, harassing of Jews and discriminatory against Jews. The report itself acknowledges that many of the interventions were to speed up the process to the benefit of the Jewish complainant or those complaining on behalf of a wider, but unspecified “Jewish Community”.

3. Training failures

The report finds the party’s “practice or policy, prior to August 2020, of failing to provide adequate training to those handling complaints of antisemitism amounted to unlawful indirect discrimination against its Jewish members”.

We agree that the failure to provide training is a serious one but it applies to all categories of complaints and is probably true of a wide swathe of organisations of all kinds. It is a role of the EHRC to try to improve practice in this arena and more effective work from them would have been welcome.

However, the report shows in many of its examples that the lack of training disadvantaged and harassed the respondents more than the complainant.

The finding is of discrimination but we have been provided with detailed evidence, which should have been equally available to the EHRC, that there is more training on antisemitism than is provided for any other area of equality except for a very different type of training in respect of sexual harassment. That training was mainly about case management issues to prevent complainant and respondent coming into contact, not about the nature of sexual harassment.

In addition, we find the proposals in the Report relating to antisemitism education to be poorly conceived – indeed the heading “Use of education and training as a sanction” (p.81) highlights the narrow conception of education which underpins the discussion. It should not be conceived of as “a sanction” but rather as a central part of what members of the Party are encouraged to participate in during the course of their membership of the organisation. Dialogue and discussion about racism in all its forms needs to become a formative aspect of life as a member of the party.

 

C: The Report’s omissions

While we have many criticisms of what the report says; we have more for what it does not say.

These relate to:

1. The specific nature of the hurt that Jews are found to have suffered.

What is striking is that throughout the report there is no evidence of Party responsibility for any Jewish member of the Party, or non-member for that matter, suffering detriment or disadvantage on account of being a Jew; surely an essential requirement for the report’s severe conclusions.

2. Jeremy Corbyn

a) There are just 12 mentions of Jeremy Corbyn in the report, of which only two concern actions taken by him, or alleged to have been taken by him. The setting in which the Inquiry was launched and the publicised presentation of the report led the public and the media to see the report as an indictment of his leadership of the Party and a judgement on his alleged antisemitism. The Commission has taken no action to contradict that interpretation.

b) In the light of this, it is reprehensible not to distinguish between actions taken by individuals supportive of Corbyn and those taken by people hostile to him – such an omission leads to the impression that all failings were Corbyn’s responsibility.

Corbyn and his team undoubtedly struggled to get a just and efficient process to investigate antisemitism off the ground, despite initiating the Chakrabarti Report (which incorporated relevant points from the Royall Inquiry which Corbyn also commissioned). But given the hostile atmosphere they were working in and the constant level of abuse he received from inside and outside the Party, this might be considered understandable if regrettable. The report neither acknowledges the hostile environment nor produces evidence that any action or inaction by the leadership was motivated by antisemitism or indeed resulted in disadvantage to Jews.

3 The uncritical use of the term “the Jewish community

The hostility of much of what the Report refers to as “the Jewish community” to Corbyn is surely linked to sympathy with Israel by many Jews and Jewish bodies and Corbyn’s long-standing advocacy for Palestinian rights. It is striking that the great decline in the traditional support for the Labour Party from British Jews occurred not under Corbyn but some twenty years ago, accelerating under Labour’s only Jewish leader, Ed Miliband, when he led the Party to be more critical of Israel’s actions and to move towards support for a Palestinian state. The whole relationship between Corbyn’s supporters and that large part of British Jewry committed to Israel cannot be understood without this context of international political alignment. The report does not analyse what proportion of the complaints related to comments on Jews as Jews as opposed to comments on Israel and Zionism. Nor does the report attempt to distinguish to what extent comments on Zionism relate to a political ideology no more worthy of protected status than any other and those which are using Zionist as a surrogate for Jew and so very probably unacceptable.

In adopting this unitary view of the ‘Jewish Community’ the report endorses and intensifies the othering of JVL and other Jewish people inside and outside the Labour Party who are highly critical of Zionism and/or Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people. JVL is systematically abused by a set of highly antagonistic Labour Party members on social media and many other places as being not real Jews and our right to describe ourselves as Jews is regularly challenged. We experience this as a pernicious form of antisemitism and are entitled to protection against it. A number of formal complaints have been submitted to the Party about such incidents but to the best of our knowledge none has been processed and there has been no reference to such complaints within this report.

While many Jewish JVL members would describe themselves as secular, we are no less Jews for that; the religiosity of complainants has never been a criterion, nor should it be. Some JVL members who are observant members of their shuls have also been the subject of complaints to the Party of antisemitism; for them, most likely, an experience even more distressing than it is for others.

4. The nature of the evidence

The report fails to detail or even list the evidence submitted to it, let alone to publish – redacted as necessary – the submissions it received. Although they acknowledge receiving evidence from JVL it is not clear whether they took it into account at any point, even to dismiss it. As we have mentioned above the evidence from the GLU Report is only made use of to support its narrative and it is not acknowledged where it undermines it.

5. Racism in general

There is a failure to examine how other forms of racism were dealt with the Party during the same period. The only comparison made is with sexual harassment complaints procedures and we question the weight or appropriateness attached to this comparison in the Report.

We are aware that the Inquiry was into antisemitism but as Caroline Walters makes clear in the Foreword “politicians on all sides have a responsibility to set standards for our public life and to lead the way in challenging racism in all its forms”.

A comparison with what the Party did with regard to these other forms of racism is surely essential to understand whether Jewish members were disadvantaged in relation to others who also were investigated (or not) when complaints of other forms of racism were made.

On the more general effects of this omission see our Official Statement: Who are missing from the EHRC Report

6. An acknowledgment of the role of the media in inflaming Labour’s crisis

On p.16, the Report notes: “The JLM’s and CAA’s concerns were not isolated. Public concern around the Labour’s handling of antisemitism has been growing since 2015”. However, there is no reference as to why that has been the case, despite repeated scholarly examination of this phenomenon. This, despite research highlighting that Labour members, both before and during Corbyn’s leadership, were almost the least likely of any Party to agree with antisemitic statements. That the media coverage had led to people imagining a grossly inflated estimate of the levels of antisemitism was a key finding reported in Bad News for Labour (Philo et al, 2019). It is unacceptable that the Report fails to acknowledge the role of the press and broadcast coverage of this issue, the continual repetition of the same allegations generally ignoring all published rebuttals and the detailed rebuttals of the JLM’s compilation of cases submitted by JVL.

 

D: Conclusions

Some of the recommendations for improving the procedures should be welcomed; mainly those which were already contained within the Chakrabarti Report. Her framework was that there was a need for clear guidance and procedures that would focus on transparency, natural justice and proportionality. We have published a commentary of the recommendations separately.

A section by section analysis of the report is in preparation.

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Links to all JVL statements and other articles on the EHRC report

Comments (32)

  • Dr Alan Maddison says:

    An excellent analysis, so many very pertinent issues raised.
    The EHRC report refers to public concern about antisemitism in the Labour Party as one justification for their inquiry, yet importantly fail to point out the origin of such concern. The media were quick to dismiss the recent wild claims of Trump on the US election count as unfounded. However, when *unevidenced* allegations were made of a widespread antisemitism problem in Labour (of a ‘cess-pit’ according to the BoD, or ‘infested with Jew haters’ I think from the CAA ! ), such unfounded accusations were simply accepted by our media with no apparent attempts to fact-check. These repated yet unchallenged attacks obviously misled the public.

    This EHRC report fails to address such exaggerations and whether they were made in good faith by the complainants.

    When it comes to the handling of complaints, this initially was the remit of Iain McNicol and my understanding is that Labour leaders are not supposed to get involved at all. According to the leaked report McNicol’s team lied to Corbyn about progress, so it is therefore disingenuous to blame him in that regard.
    My view is that antisemitism is no more frequent in Labour than in other parties, probably lower, and the slow handling of complaints by McNicol’s team was designed as part of a smear campaign to prevent Corbyn ever becoming PM. The EHRC report, through its failings, has sadly contributed to this anti-democratic vendetta.

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  • Edward Hill says:

    The EHRC report refers frequently to the Chakrabarti Inquiry report, but fails to follow its example in considering ‘Zionism’ and support or opposition to it. Indeed the word appears only twice, and in context of antisemitism: “murdering Zionest bastards” (page 79); and “zio” in a list of examples of unwanted conduct related to social media, which also contains most of the report’s references to Israel (page31).
    “Keep things simple” seems to have been one of the unofficial guiding principles in compiling the report, the others being: “don’t invite unwelcome criticism” – by challenging any mainstream viewpoint (complainants, media etc.); and “validate the original decision to intervene” – by finding the Labour Party guilty of at least one direct breach of the 2010 Equality Act.

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  • Wendé Anne Maunder says:

    Thank you, @Jewishvoiceforlabour.org,uk/statement/the-shortcomings-of-the-ehrc-report. You have confirmed that I was right to #standbyJeremyCorbin.

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  • John Bowley says:

    The EHRC investigation and many of its opinions are shoddy and biased.

    Thank you, JVL, for doing a decent and thought-through analysis.

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  • Hugh R J Williams says:

    Thank you for this much needed response. It seems that EHRC have failed in their basic task here, and certainly failed to protect the human rights of the many accused of antisemitism who were then later shown to be blameless. EHRC are probably not bad people, but they are slaves to the well honed consensus that has gone beyond the need for evidence to justify the continuing slurs.

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  • chris wallis says:

    Brilliant. Thank you. Do you have standing to take them to court, I wonder?

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  • John Thatcher says:

    I tried to post this to fb and was told I couldn’t because it had content someone had found offensive. I am currently on 30 day suspension so this may be the reason. Has anyone else had difficulty posting this on fb?

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    • Mike Cushman says:

      We’ve posted it on our FB page and it has been shared 72 times so i don’t know what caused you grief.

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  • siobhan mccauley says:

    This is a thoughtful and well evidenced response. When I read the EHRC report it struck me immediately that Jenny Formby was named but McNicol wasn’t. It felt deliberate that there was no attempt to distinguish between the time and impact of McNicol’s hostile actions towards Jeremy Corbyn and the detrimental impact on the running of the Party . I hope Keir Starmer listens to JVL as he does to voices from other Jewish communities.

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  • Nick Jenkins says:

    Excellent analysis, and yes, it struck me too that the report compared the party’s policy and processes to counter antisemitism with its sexual harassment policy on several occasions. This seemed disingenuous.
    Sexual harassment is a category on its own and pretty much every organisation in the country has a policy on it. But how many have a SEPARATE policy on antisemitism, as this report apparently expected the Labour Party to have? There is little political debate about what constitutes sexual harassment but, as we all know, that certainly can’t be said of antisemitism.

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  • Will says:

    I’ve tried to express some of these concerns. You’ve done it so much better. (I got myself accused of being a BNP sympathiser and ‘hostile’ to Jews).

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  • Alan Lafferty says:

    Excellent report. Not sure how a nevessary legal challenge to the report would evolve. But i suspect that there will be one to the Corbyn suspension and its aftermath which would amount to a challenge to EHRC report? Putting together a legal team would therefore be a priority?
    Most people have seemed to be wary of criticising the EHRC itself but is it not true that 1)even Harriet Harman had done so previously 2) two of its black members had formally resigned in protest 3) it had had its budget cut dramatically by the Government and was inclined to come up with something the Tories would like 5) to my knowledge it has done nothing in relation to BLM.

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  • Jane Miller says:

    GLU and CAA need explaining.

    [JVL web responds:
    GLU stands for the Governance and Legal Unit of the Labour Party which handles disciplinary cases
    CAA stands for Campaign Against Antisemitism. It is a charity which claims to be dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism. Its charitable status is being challenged on the grounds that it is largely engaged in attacks on the left. See, for instance, Brief response to an ‘antisemitism’ hoax, published on our website in Dec 2019]

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  • Voirrey Faragher says:

    Thank you for this. I am grateful to you for the work you are doing. I would like to think the EHRC will be held accountable for their poor quality and misleading and destructive report.

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  • Shaun Pye says:

    A really thorough and well argued response. Thank you. A voice of reason in a mad world.

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  • Mary Davies says:

    Excellent analysis. Thorough and insightful.
    Thank you for your hard work on this.

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  • Martin Kernick says:

    I wonder, is there scope for taking the EHRC to court?

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  • Doug says:

    No one supports JC more than me, but
    If you don’t stand up to them they are well within their rights to take that as a sign of weakness
    In future we need at least one horrible so and so to do the dirty work
    Red Tories have a surplus, maybe we could borrow one

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  • Deborah says:

    I have found an error in this report;
    In section C 5 Racism in general
    We are aware that the Inquiry was into antisemitism but as Caroline Walters ….
    The name should not contain the letter l, it is Waters

    https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/yr-hyn-ydym-ni/our-commissioners-committees-and-governance/about-our-commissioners

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  • Adam says:

    Has JVL been approached by any media outlets, especially the BBC (the organisation behind the Panorama programme), for comment regarding the EHRC report?
    You should voice this review loud and clear.
    Also, wasn’t the investigation based on Labour being “institutionally antisemitic”. However, unless I’m mistaken, has not been mentioned by mentioned by the report or media?

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  • Myra Sands says:

    Thank you for this excellent analysis of the flaws in the EHRC report. I note from today’s Morning Star that JVL has commented on Sir Keir Starmers reaction to former shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti’s current work on a legal case to get Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension revoked. So things are moving towards his reinstatement, and we must hope Ms Chakrabarti succeeds. Perhaps, as the Labour Party coffers have been seriously depleted by the paying off of the Panorama Whistle Blowers, Sir Keir could be stuck for cash for the upcoming elections if Jeremy is reinstated at considerable legal costs to the party.

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  • rc says:

    Evans GS has threatened us not only with disciplinary investigation, but with the attention of the mainstream media (in his circular to branch and CLP officers – ie received one, presumably in that capacity rather than as a member…).
    He is therefore in effect instructing us to be precise and well-reasoned and always to demand and use evidence where it is required.
    Surely he would not be menacing us with a repeat of the Zinoviev letter? No, the minute attention he is predicting must surely be that from well-intentioned or at least neutral commentators… so we must make sure that we live up to their requirements.
    (half in fun and wholly in earnest)

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  • rc says:

    In my 1830 post above. first para line 3, you should read “I”. not ie – again the dreaded autocorrect strikes me down – but not out!

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  • DJ says:

    The EHRC report is full of holes. Hardly surprising given that it was never really intended to throw any light on anything. Having decided at the outset that the Labour Party had a large antisemitism problem the authors have cobbled together a half baked report. All that was required by the establishment was a few dubious claims against the party leadership and it’s”agents”to whip up condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn and the left. The whole thing is a sham!

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  • Peter Money says:

    Excellent analysis. However, I think you are being rather generous when you talk of the report having ‘shortcomings’. It is a scandal that it is taken seriously at all. It is an incredibly shoddy piece of work.

    The fact that what became the EHRC has had so many cuts since the EOC/CRE early days might well have something to do with that.

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  • RC says:

    Have I missed other comrades pointing out the gross antisemitism of the assertion on p 55 that we Jews are more likely to complain about the AS variant of racism? They try to brand us as touchy and clannish. This portion of the report must be rejected and struck down. The ‘impartial’ investigators of racism are themselves racist.
    They also libel gentile (do we have to say ‘non-Jewish’ nowadays?) LP comrades. Do we really accept that our gentile comrades are less concerned about AS racism than we are?
    The arrangements to let the BoD, the JLM, the CST and even the JLC, (to whom Nandy boasted about Stephen Kinnock’s dressing down for advocating a mild application of international law) and the so-called CAA monopolise disciplinary and educational arrangements, especially but not restricted to, AS forms of racism, are equally an anti-democratic disgrace.
    If these proposals are not rejected by the LP though democratic processes, is there an alternative to litigation? Our generosity is already being strained by the need to defend Jeremy Corbyn from the suit by Keir Starmer’s ally John Ware, and perhaps Gemma Bolton, who is being ”investigated ” for having declared the plain truth that Israel is an apartheid state etc etc. Do they not dare to debate this contention?
    If these proposals go through unaltered, the few aspects of democracy left within this bureaucratic institution will shrivel and perish.

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  • John Y. says:

    This is a formidable response. It must lead to a fundamental revision of the EHRC-report and the Starmer administrations dubious role. The role of IHRA’s role in redefining antisemitism by merging Israel-criticism, anti-zionism with anti-semitism, is polluting British politics and weaponising slander. UK must come trhough this. Urgently.

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  • Rod Webb says:

    An excellent analysis. It managed to retain its authority throughout not only by its clarity, but by its complete lack of emotion in laying out the facts. It’s fairness, particularly in acknowledging when the report got things right, somehow highlights the obvious pain the such a biased investigation has produced. With less restraint, I now want to shove it in the faces of all those have done so much damage to the Labour Party and to this country as a result.

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  • Will Scott says:

    Thank you for this analysis. Very well done. Although it’s no surprise, it’s to MSMs great shame that they have not done a similar breakdown.

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  • Sue Johnson says:

    Thank you JVL for expressing clearly some of the thoughts I have about the EHRC report and the wider issue of anti semitism within the Labour party but have felt unable to express. The nub of this whole business is the identification of anyone who criticizes the Israeli State as anti semitic. This is a distortion of the meaning of being against Jewish people per se and I further believe it is an attack on freedom of speech. This fundamental difference in what is considered anti semitic as against legitimate criticism of the practices of a Nation State against other nations, races or indeed it’s own population (for example Rohinga peoples, Kurdish peoples, Uighur peoples) is what needs to be openly discussed. Yet this discussion is avoided at all costs by MSM and almost everyone else! We are scared of being labelled as anti semitic if we attempt to discuss this publicly! The fact is that this whole issue was seized upon by factions within the Labour party and opponents of democratic socialism to discredit and demonize both Jeremy Corbyn and the whole of the (socialist) left wing of the party and membership.

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  • Chris Main says:

    Once again the JVL is the voice of reason and sound analysis. Thanks for all your hard work. I wonder what the status of the EHRC Report will be, if and when, the GLU Report finally surfaces, or whether the media will even report it (assuming the Report is made public).

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  • Janice McKinnon says:

    Sorry but JVL is an insignificant group of academic verbose geriatrics with no influence.
    Flying the flag should be delegated to pragmatic youth who could sell the theory in 3 short sentences!!

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