LONDON (Labour Buzz) - After 16 days Jeremy Corbyn has been reinstated as a Labour member and a lot of people are not happy. However, a close look at the EHRC report shows this was probably the only decision they could have reached. Not only does it give him the right to express his opinion, but it also backs up many of the things he and his supporters have been saying all along.
The NEC panel sanctioned the leader with a formal warning but decided his membership could continue. Other options open to them include dismissing the case, imposing a temporary suspension, or recommending expulsion.
A lot of people would have preferred the latter. The Jewish Labour movement criticised the decision and said it was the work of a ‘fractionally aligned political committee’. Starmer added his criticism on Twitter saying his predecessor’s statement “completely distracted from a report that identified unlawful conduct in our tackling of racism within the Labour party. This should shame us all.”
He then invited more dissent into the party, by refusing to restore the whip to the former leader.
Others complained at the Labour leadership’s handling of the case and accused them of ‘political naivety’ in believing a compromise would work. In doing so they conveniently forgot that one of the main recommendations of the EHRC report was that the leadership should have no involvement in these kinds of disputes.
What the EHRC report actually says
The truth is that the NEC panel didn’t have many options. The EHRC report protects the rights of “Labour party members who, for example… express their opinions on internal party matters, such as the scale of antisemitism within the party, based on their own experience and within the law.”
At no point in his statement did Corbyn say antisemitism doesn’t exist. Indeed, he makes a point of saying anyone who does so would be wrong.
Part of the problem here is the amazingly slanted way in which the media has covered the episode. In their coverage, the Guardian claims the former leader’s statement “rejected the overall conclusions of the EHRC report into antisemitism in the party.” This is an outright lie. Far from rejecting the report, he urged Starmer to implement its finding.
Usually, it would come as a surprise to see a paper which prides itself on fighting ‘fake news’ to bend the truth to such extremes, but when it comes to Corbyn and the wider coverage of the EHRC report, it’s simply a continuation of a trend.
Most of the reporting surrounding the EHRC’s findings focus on top-level findings of ‘political interference and harassment. However, a closer reading of the report shows a more nuanced view, one which actually supports the version of events set down in another report that has largely been ignored by the media.
Earlier in the year, an internal report into antisemitism made its way into the public domain despite the party’s lawyers attempting to suppress it. Produced during the dying days of the Corbyn regime, it told a story of a toxic culture at Labour HQ with people fuelled by a hatred of anyone in the leadership team, especially if they happened to be female or black.
The EHRC report follows the report’s version of events almost exactly. It covers a period of time running from March 2016 and May 2019. For most of that time, Labour’s complaints process was controlled by people who, as the leaked report shows, were deeply hostile to the Labour leadership.
At this time, Ian McNichol was General Secretary while Sam Matthews was heading up the disputes team which handled antisemitism cases. Both were among the whistleblowers who spoke to Panorama’s expose of antisemitism within the party.
Labour’s leaked internal report finds that with McNichol and Matthews in charge the party was incredibly lax at handling complaints. Between November 2016 and February 2018, the GLU received more than 300 complaints of antisemitism, at least half of which the report’s authors believed required action. However, just 24 notices of investigation and ten suspensions were handed out.
The EHRC makes the same allegation. It shows that mishandling of complaints occurred at the time that the process was controlled by the very people who spoke to the BBC.
Political interference
One of the key accusations of the report was a pattern of political interference into cases by the leader of the opposition’s office. However, this interference often resulted in the acceleration of the cases. This especially true in the case of Ken Livingstone when the leader’s office intervened to accelerate his suspension.
Ten of the 23 cases occurred between the departure of McNichol and the arrival of Corbyn ally Jennie Formby. During this time, Corbyn’s team claims they were asked for their opinion of cases, as Karrie Murphy claimed in her recent Guardian column.
“For a brief period in early 2018, between Iain McNichol leaving and Jennie Formby taking over as General Secretary, those running the governance and legal unit began asking Corbyn’s team for their views on individual cases,” she wrote. “Not only did we not ask for this oversight of individual cases, I thought it was a factional trap and I put a stop to it.”
The EHRC accepts this version, but remarkably claims it does not matter. “It does not matter for our analysis whether the formal process was instigated by LOTO [Leader of the Opposition] staff or by GLU [Governance and Legal Unit] staff,” the EHRC report says. “They were all Labour Party employees acting in the course of their employment when they set up this system, therefore the Labour Party is responsible for their actions.”
Whatever the motivation behind interference, the arrival of Formby signalled a considerable rise in the number of cases processed. The EHRC backs this up, although it makes it clear that more could and should have been done, something which Corbyn’s team accepts.
Contrary to what’s been reported the EHRC confirms almost all the claims made by Corbyn’s supporters. It shows that the leadership inherited a broken complaints system, and it shows that things only improved once Corbyn’s allies got their hands on the process. However, given the contents of the report, its findings are remarkable.
As the leader of the party, the report holds Corbyn personally responsible. It gives McNichol and his team a free pass and instead blames their failings on Corbyn himself. It doesn’t matter that the complaints process was in the hands of Labour staff who actively worked against the leadership. It doesn’t matter that the people who blew the whistle on the Panorama documentary were the very people who were responsible for many of those delays.
Because they were employees of the Labour party, it was the party which was responsible; and as leader of the party, the buck stops with Corbyn. In other words, Corbyn is to blame for the actions of people working to undermine him.
This might be true in most parties and organisation, but it’s a remarkable omission to ignore to the context of internal battles compromised efforts to improve the flow of complaints.
More importantly, pushing the blame onto Corbyn fails to learn the real lessons of the report. Both it and the leaked internal report, as well as the recent report from Labour’s Muslim Network, shows that this is a party with deep and serious problems to address. Attempts to solve them have been, and continue to be, thwarted by a toxic atmosphere riven by factional infighting. Until the party solves that they won’t have much chance of moving forward.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)