The damning report that forced Labour to act over antisemitism

The EHRC’s 130-page investigation on Labour’s handling of antisemitism complaints was a damning indictment not just of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership on the issue, but also of a party ill-equipped in its structures to deal with a problem it had always vowed to campaign against – racism.

“We found specific examples of harassment, discrimination and political interference in our evidence,” the equalities watchdog said in the foreword to its October  2020 report, adding: “But equally of concern was a lack of leadership within the Labour party on these issues, which is hard to reconcile with its stated commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.”

The EHRC had been responding to a submission from the Jewish Labour Movement the Jewish Labour Movement, which submitted testimony from hundreds of Jewish members and more than 70 whistleblowers to the watchdog in 2019, along with the Campaign Against Antisemitism, who sent their own dossier of evidence.

The EHRC’s report into the crisis did not single out Corbyn himself for blame.  But the EHRC’s lead investigator Alasdair Henderson said at a press conference that the failure of leadership must ultimately stop with him.

The former leader’s response to the publication of the document – in which he suggested the anti-Jewish racism problem was “dramatically overstated for political reasons” –  was also evidence enough of the fact that Corbyn was part of the problem.

The EHRC said there had been “a clear breakdown of trust between the Labour Party, many of its members and the Jewish community.”

It ruled the party had broken the law by failing to prevent “acts of harassment and discrimination”.

It also concluded that Corbyn’s leadership “did not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it”.

Analysing 70 complaint files between March 2016 and May 2019  the EHRC concluded that there were 23 instances of political interference by staff from the leader’s office and others.

“These included clear examples of interference at various stages throughout the complaint-handling process, including in decisions on whether to investigate and whether to suspend,” it said.

It held Labour responsible for this action which it said “was indirectly discriminatory and unlawful.”

The EHRC also said there was “political interference” in decisions about whether to investigate complaints,  citing the example of a complaint made in April 2018 about Jeremy Corbyn, who had previously posted a statement in support of an artist responsible for antisemitic mural in the East End of London.

It emerged that staff from Corbyn’s office called for the case to be dismissed, emailing the party’s governance and legal unit, which was responsible for complaints.

The email said: “The complaint itself seems to fall well below the threshold required for investigation.”

The EHRC investigated 70 complaints of antisemitism, with the vast majority – 59 – concerning social media.

Cases included social media posts that “diminished the scale or significance of the Holocaust” or “compared Israelis to Hitler or the Nazis”, or “referenced conspiracies about the Rothschilds and Jewish power and control” or “accused British Jews of greater loyalty to Israel than Britain”, the EHRC said.

The report found that Labour had breached the Equality Act in two cases – relating to the former London mayor Ken Livingstone and a borough councillor, Pam Bromley  –  “by committing unlawful harassment” against Jewish people.

In the Livingstone case, it was concluded, while he was a member of Labour’s national executive committee, and therefore an agent of the party according to the EHRC, he had “repeatedly denied” a Facebook image suggesting that Israel be relocated to the United States was antisemitic.

At the time, the former mayor of London was involved in the case of the MP Naz Shah, who later apologised for sharing the Facebook posts.

In conclusion, the EHRC said Shah’s comments “went beyond legitimate criticism of the Israeli government” and were not protected by rights to free expression. “Neither is Ken Livingstone’s support for those comments,” the EHRC added.

The EHRC also found evidence of interference in the Livingstone case itself with the members of the party’s governance and legal unit (GLU) who “sought the green light” from staff at the leader’s office to conduct a disciplinary interview with the former mayor.

The watchdog also examined the case of Pam Bromley, a Labour councillor in Rossendale, Lancashire.

She made “numerous statements” on Facebook between April 2018 and December 2019 that the EHRC said amounted to “unwanted conduct related to Jewish ethnicity” and “had the effect of harassing Labour party members”.

On 15 December 2019, she posted on Facebook about Jeremy Corbyn: “My major criticism of him – his failure to repel the fake accusations of antisemitism in the LP [Labour party] – may not be repeated as the accusations may probably now magically disappear, now capitalism has got what it wanted.”

Bromley, who had been suspended from the party in April 2018, was expelled by Labour in February 2020.