“The Labour Party was formed out of the trade union movement to give working people their own political voice. The link from the workplace to the party through the affiliated trade unions is what makes it unique to this day. This link is more important than ever as we work together to tackle the urgent problems we face as a country, from stagnating wages to failing public services.”
That’s not me speaking, but the Labour Party’s own website in 2021.
Only the Party now seems to have such little respect for some of its own statements. One of the latest targets of its purge of left-wingers is the National President of one of the oldest unions who have traditionally organised among very poorly paid workers. He is Ian Hodson of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), currently in receipt of a letter threatening him with potential expulsion dressed up in the Orwellian euphemism “auto-exclusion”.
Hodson’s union can trace its lineage back to the “Manchester Friendly Association of Operative Bakers” established in 1849. By 1854 it was led by another Hodson – Thomas Hodson. No relation, Ian tells me, but he’s pleased by the coincidence and has a picture of his namesake on the wall of his union office.
In 1861, the first Hodson led the formation of the Amalgamated Union of Operative Bakers (AUOB), bringing together unions in Bristol, Cheltenham, Hanley, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, Warrington and Wigan, along with his Manchester society. The union relocated its headquarters to London back in the 19th century, but the majority of its members then were still from Lancashire. The current Hodson – Ian – worked formerly as a biscuit baker at Symbols Biscuits in Blackpool.
The AUOB was one of the earliest unions to give financial support to the fledgling Labour Party, cementing that crucial industrial and political linkage in 1902. The key period that prefigured the Labour Party coming into being as a political expression of the trade union movement is seen as 1888-89 when there were epic struggles by female matchworkers at the Bryant and May factory in Bow, East London in June/July 1988, Gasworkers at Beckton in the spring of 1889 and the Great Dock Strike of late summer and early Autumn 1889. East London was the cradle of these struggles for shorter hours and better pay in safer workplaces, though the first burst of militancy in that district in those years, a few weeks before the Matchworkers strike, barely registers a footnote.
This was a strike led by immigrant Jewish bakery workers who had fled persecution in the Russian Empire, and were now fighting in their new adopted land against 16-20 hour shifts with few breaks. They took spontaneous strike action, marching from bakery to bakery with a few musicians playing stirring music, to call workers out. Some 300 bakery workers were eventually involved, winning support too from German immigrant bakers in the East End. Their gains were minimal but the example of workers organising collectively left its imprint.
In the wake of the successful Great Dock Strike a year later, involving many tens of thousands of East End workers, two of its leaders, Ben Tillett and Tom Mann wrote about the “new unionism” of the ultra-exploited unskilled and low skilled workers that had been born through these struggles. They wrote:
“The real difference between the old and the new unions is that they do not recognise, as we do, that it is the work of the trade unions to stamp out poverty from the land…We are prepared to work unceasingly for the emancipation of the workers. Our ideal is the Cooperative Commonwealth – for families to procure not merely the necessaries of life as ordinarily understood but everything that conduces to the elevation of humanity”
One important strand that emerged was syndicalism which stressed that economic and political change could be brought about by militant industrial struggles by workers, but the more enduring expression was in the idea of forming a political party that would give a powerful collective voice to the needs and demands of working class communities.
Pledge number 7 of Keir Starmer’s “10 Pledges” to Labour members on which he was elected as party leader was to “Strengthen workers’ rights and trade unions”- working “shoulder to shoulder with trade unions”. it is hard to see how the targeting of BFAWU’s National President – who works day in, day out for low-paid workers – for expulsion matches that pledge. Mind you there has been precious little sign of any of Starmer’s other pledges being acted on. But this action against Hodson seems also to symbolise the desire among Labour’s leaders and influencers to break the fundamental link of the Party with the conscious collective struggles of working class people through their unions.
While the Labour Party “under new management” continues to show how acceptable it is to businesses and Middle England, BFAWU, meanwhile, continue to spearhead key campaigns for better working conditions in the food industry; for food workers not to be priced out of purchasing the food they produce; for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) for low-paid workers, especially women, and workers on zero-hours contracts who don’t meet the threshold for SSP of earning £120 a week. And BWAFU are seeking to unionise the precariat who work on Zero-Hours contracts in the super-exploitative fast-food industry.
These are the campaigns against Tory-imposed misery that the Labour Party ought to be putting its full weight behind, but it can’t when its main priority seems to be an internal war on the Left of the party and even on trade unionists who are standing up to that misdirection of the Party’s energy and resources. Meanwhile the Tories, the party of the millionaires and billionaires, are laughing all the way to the bank.
Memories on Facebook are not always enlightening but today Facebook informed me, because I had commented on it, that this day last year was the extended deadline for submissions to the Forde inquiry: 7 August 2020. It was an inquiry announced after the explosive and meticulously documented revelations in Labour’s leaked report. One year on from that deadline, we don’t have the report and we don’t have a scooby when, or even if, it will get published. A cynical person might conclude that obstructions have been deliberately put up so that the people most angry about it will have given up on the party by the time (which may still be years away) when it sees the light of day.
I am marking this anniversary by publishing my own personal submission sent in July 2020. I encourage others who submitted to do the same, as this might help reveal perspectives on the issues the party seems to be avoiding facing up to. Here it is:
Submission to the Forde Inquiry from David Rosenberg
The focus of my submission is with regard to these aspects of the terms of reference: 1. The truth or otherwise of the main allegations in ‘the Report’ (…the extent of racist, sexist and other discriminatory culture within Labour Party workplaces, the attitudes and conduct of the senior staff of the Labour Party, and their relationships with the elected leadership of the Labour Party);
3. The structure, culture and practices of the Labour Party organisation including the relationship between senior party staff and the elected leadership of the Labour Party.
I am making this submission as a Jewish member of the Labour Party with particular reference to narratives in the Leaked Report about the approach at different levels of the party towards the issue of antisemitism (and by extension other forms of racism). I am also reflecting on the claims in the Leaked Report about how these matters apparently became intertwined with the relationship between senior party staff and the elected leadership of the Labour Party.
Personal background details
I have been an active trade unionist since 1980. I am a retired member of the NEU, but still active on my local branch committee as International Solidarity Officer.
I joined the Labour Party in the early 1980s and attended meetings in two inner-London constituencies consecutively in that decade before my membership lapsed and I didn’t renew. I rejoined in 2015. By then I was living in a different constituency. Since 2017 I have been an elected officer in my CLP (Political Education Officer). I canvassed during the 2017 and 2019 General Elections in my own constituency and in several marginal seats.
I have been involved in anti-racism, as well as education and campaigning about antisemitism both professionally and at a grassroots level for several decades. In the 1980s I worked for the GLC-funded Jewish Cultural and Anti-Racist Project, then later at the Runnymede Trust. At Runnymede I co-wrote a book: Daily Racism: the Press and Black People in Britain. From the early ‘90s until 2015 I was a primary school teacher in inner London, where I was responsible for managing our equalities strategies and policies.
From 2016-20 I have helped to lead an annual educational initiative that takes multicultural, cross-generational groups of trade unionists and anti-racist activists to Krakow and Auschwitz where we learn about antisemitism past and present, and reflect on the bigotries re-emerging in Europe today.
In 2010/11, I wrote a book about the Jewish confrontation with fascism and antisemitism in 1930s Britain, Battle for the East End. I teach adult education courses that include significant aspects of London’s Jewish history, and another focusing on Jewish life and death in Warsaw focusing especially on the Warsaw Ghetto and the Uprising of 1943.
In 2016 I was convenor of Cable Street 80 – a set of events celebrating united Jewish and non-Jewish action against Oswald Mosley’s fascists in 1936. The centrepiece of the 80th anniversary commemoration was a march preceded and followed by rallies at which Labour was represented by Rushanara Ali MP, Dawn Butler MP, and Jeremy Corbyn MP as well as Tower Hamlets Mayor, John Biggs, and GLA member Unmesh Desai. The platform also included representatives from the Jewish Labour Movement, the Jewish Socialists’ Group and a Jewish Cable Street veteran, the late Max Levitas.
In addition to my personal experience as a Labour Party member in the 1980s and since 2015, my longstanding professional involvements with issues of equalities and racism, including antisemitism, and my experience in anti-fascist campaigns since the mid-1970s inform my understanding of the way such issues have manifested themselves in the Labour Party.
Commentary
The “crisis of antisemitism”
The dominant media narratives about Labour’s engagement with racism over the period that the Leaked Report covers is that Labour suffered from a “crisis of antisemitism” during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership; that the Labour Party had become an “unsafe” space for Jews; that complaints about antisemitism were not dealt with; that an antisemitic culture was left to fester, and that such problems emanated from the top levels of leadership within the Party. Jeremy Corbyn himself was accused firstly of tolerating antisemitism in the Party and then later of being an antisemite himself. Jewish community newspapers described him as an “existential threat” to the Jewish community.
As a Jewish Labour member who, with my background involvements, has many reasons to be very sensitive to encountering and recognising any forms of racism and bigotry, those narratives did not correspond with my experience, nor that of many Jewish Labour members I know well and cooperate with through the Labour Party.
During my spell in the Labour Party in the 1980s, I did encounter racism in my branch once – against Gypsies/Travellers. A small number of caravans occupied an empty paved space in the locality that nobody had used during the entire period that we were living in the area. The abusive language about Gypsies/Travellers expressed within my ward meeting was shocking; equally shocking was the vehement denial, when challenged, that anything racist had been said. Ironically, at that precise time the Labour-led GLC were engaged in very positive and visionary anti-racist work across the capital (I was working then for a GLC-funded anti-racist project).
I never encountered any antisemitism in the Labour Party in that period or any other explicit racism against other minorities. However, it was evident in both the branches I was in, consecutively, in east London then north London, that relatively few people from visible minorities were active members. Perhaps they did not feel particularly welcome.
The Leaked Report covers 2014-19. I rejoined the Labour Party in 2015 and have been very involved in my branch, only missing an occasional ward or CLP meeting because of exceptional circumstances. In addition to the ward and CLP meetings, I have taken part in the full range of the Labour Party’s collective activities locally, both social and political, so I have experienced the “culture” of my local Labour Party in a range of contexts.
At no time since I rejoined have a I felt anything other than completely welcome as a Jewish Labour Party member. While I would recognise that the ethnic composition of the branch does not reflect quite the same proportions as the community that it covers, there is nevertheless a very positive anti-racist ethos in the CLP, and in my ward. Attention to all equality matters is regarded as very important, and runs through every meeting.
There are a significant number of Jewish members in my ward and in the wider CLP. Several of these members have stood for and been elected to posts ranging from ward committee members to successful council candidates. I cannot think of any Jewish Labour members I know personally in the constituency who have experienced any hostility or negativity on account of their Jewish identity, or for whom being Jewish is any barrier to their full participation.
I should add that my constituency is Islington North, and our MP, who attends every monthly CLP meeting as well as participating in many other local activities alongside members, is Jeremy Corbyn.
If there were any truth at all to the suggestions that have come from right wing media, and from hostile groups or institutions on the strongly pro-Zionist wing of the Jewish community, that Jeremy Corbyn tolerates or indulges in antisemitism, I am sure that the Jewish members in our CLP would be the first to notice. Whatever differences we may have with each other on any issue, all the Jewish Labour members I know in the constituency consider our MP a completely reliable and devoted ally in the fight against all racism including antisemitism.
Antisemitism in British society
Antisemitism and other forms of racism have deep historical roots in British society that have left an imprint. I have no doubt that there has been a rise in antisemitism in British society in more recent times (which is backed up by statistics). I am 62, and during the last six or seven years I have encountered or overheard more antisemitism in everyday life (on public transport, in cafes and pubs, at football matches etc) than I had heard in the previous 55 years combined. Several close Jewish friends have had similar perceptions. On very rare occasions where I have encountered comments in Labour Party meetings that came close to being antisemitic, this has immediately been challenged.
I believe that there is a significant crisis of racism, including a growth in antisemitism, in British society (hence the recent Black Lives Matter movement) especially since 2010. This has occurred under Tory governments that not only created the Hostile Environment, but also maintained very close friendships with central and eastern European governments that express antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and anti-Roma ideas and have enacted discriminatory policies which in some cases could be described as persecution.
That environment, and those formal links, especially through the Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament, and strong expressions of support for the Hungarian Government which used dog-whistle anti-Soros antisemitism to help get itself re-elected, are matters of public record and established fact. In contrast, the notion of a “crisis of antisemitism” within Labour seems to lack any real substance.
The dissonance between the mainstream media narrative and the actuality on the ground is huge. The “noise” generated around the issues often seems to be in inverse proportion to the evidence. But fears about the Labour Party within the Jewish community amongst people who are not members are real. These fears among people with no direct experience of the Party, however, have been constantly reinforced by repetition in media outlets hostile to the Labour Party, and by certain factions within the Party who have treated the issue as a political football. As a Jewish person who takes antisemitism deadly seriously, I find this completely distasteful, and itself bordering on antisemitism.
Well before I read the Leaked Report, I had been digging deeply myself to learn whatever I could about alleged incidents of antisemitism in Labour, and I reached the the conclusion that we were faced with three categories of incidents, which I elaborate below.
1. Malicious, explicit antisemitism, inseparable from far right antisemitism
These are the most serious, clear cut cases, but also the smallest in number and the easiest to act on. They include Holocaust denial, open hostility to Jews as Jews, the use of vicious antisemitic stereotypes and wild conspiracy theories about Jewish money and power. Sometimes these incidents are very thinly veiled as comments on Israel or Zionism. These cases should be dealt with swiftly through a clear and transparent process, most likely ending in expulsion, unless absolute recognition, contrition, and a clear commitment to making amends is demonstrated.
2. Comment on Israel/Palestine/Zionism which involves largely unconscious borrowing of antisemitic stereotypes/tropes combined with certain levels of ignorance and clumsiness This category covers many more cases and is much more complex. Expressed typically on social media, the intention often seems to be a principled critique of Israeli policy, daily oppression in the Occupied Territories and/or a critique of Zionism as a political ideology – an ideology which in practice has had, and continues to have, serious negative consequences for Palestinians.
Such comments on social media are made in the context of Israel’s body politic shifting far to the right in recent decades and becoming more explicitly racist (eg the Nation-State law 2018). But it frequently fails to distinguish between “Jews” and “Israelis”; or between the Israeli government and Israeli people. Sometimes it seems to unconsciously borrow traditional antisemitic tropes about control/excessive influence over the media or other governments, and apply them to the Israeli government and its supporters.
In many of the cases I am aware of, the intention seems to have been genuine and principled (supporting justice for Palestinians) but perpetrators have used clumsy language or have demonstrated a certain level of ignorance. However it is much harder to make hard and fast judgement and use the label “antisemitic” in cases where the intent is not malicious. If we assume that the vast majority of people who join Labour do so because they want to make a better world, these seem to be cases where sustained educational work rather than heavy-handed discipline would be most effective. These cases are often without antisemitic intent but are perceived as antisemitic. But it is allegations that make the headlines.
3. Forthright and sharply expressed declarations of justified support for Palestinian rights, that condemn Israeli government policy in the harshest terms, and call out the racist outcomes of Zionist ideology. Whilst I don’t think use of the strongest and sharpest language is the best way to encourage others to rethink and re-evaluate their positions, I am aware of several cases that fit into this category where disciplinary measures have been taken which do not seem to fit any objective definition of antisemitism. But again it is the allegations that make both the news and the statistics.
Antisemitism and anti-Zionism
The problems in Category 3 incidents and to some extent in Category 2 above are exacerbated by a blurring of antisemitism with anti-Zionism. Antisemitism is hostility, prejudice and discrimination towards Jews, as Jews. Anti-Zionism is a critique, however trenchantly expressed, of a political ideology on which Jews themselves have (and have had for generations) a range of opinions for and against and in-between.
When political Zionism arose as an ideology (1897) it was only one of several ideologies posed as the way forward for the Jewish people in the 20th century (and beyond). In that same year, 1897, a secular Jewish socialist organisation called the Bund was created, based on an anti-nationalist ideology that sought full equality for Jews wherever they were in the world. Bundism had much more influence on left wing Jewish thought than Zionism until the Holocaust. Zionism was a minority opinion in all Jewish communities around the world before the Holocaust. Its peak in terms of popularity among Jewish communities was in the 1960s and ‘70s, but it has been in slow but steady decline since the Lebanon war of 1982. In the last major survey of Jewish opinion in Britain about Zionism, 59% of British Jews defined themselves as Zionists, down from 70%+ several years earlier.
In the 21st century, it remains the case that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. Jews in the Labour Party today include a mixture of Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists. Many of the non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews I know in the Labour Party are very sympathetic to the philosophy of the Bund.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition and set of guidance exemplars, which Labour adopted (albeit with a small caveat) under great external pressure in 2018, has unfortunately blurred distinctions between antisemitism and commentary on Israel/Palestine and Zionism, and contributed to increasing confusion in this fraught area. The IHRA definition had a chequered history (going back to the early 2000s), long before the IHRA or the Labour Party adopted it. Its original author, Kenneth Stern, has effectively disowned it and expressed discontent about the manner in which it has been used not for monitoring purposes as originally intended but to limit free-speech. A number of prominent liberal Jewish commentators with expertise on antisemitism, have strongly critiqued it as wrong-headed and for blurring important distinctions.
The Leaked Report
Reading the Leaked Report confirmed many of the thoughts and conclusions I had reached about how to understand and categorise incidents where antisemtism was alleged. It also threw new light on the detail of some of these. But crucially it also supplied missing pieces of the jigsaw on the responses by different actors to the allegations of antisemitism.
My own perception was that, despite a constant media barrage making claims that the Labour leadership, which had established itself from 2015 (but only gained a majority on the NEC in 2018), had been slow to act on antisemitism and half-hearted in its responses, I had actually observed it paying a lot of attention to the issue, and it seemed determined to root out any problems. Its statements and actions struck me, as a Jewish Labour member, as genuine, determined and welcome. The Leaked Report gave me a more convincing explanation of what had been going on, and I think it is extremely valuable in that respect, but before elaborating on that I want to comment on a key moment in 2016.
The Chakrabarti Report and Principles
In 2016 there was a brief moment where some very helpful and clear thinking looked as though it could be applied to these matters. This was the launch of the Chakrabarti Report, which I considered to be a very valuable and important piece of work. For various reasons that Report was quickly undermined largely by forces outside the Party and hostile to it, but also by significant forces within the Party, as the Leaked Report itself reveals.
Despite the mounting accusations and allegations against the Party the Chakrabarti Report was adamant that: “The Labour Party is not overrun by antisemitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism,” but it acknowledged “clear evidence (going back some years) of minority hateful or ignorant attitudes and behaviours festering within a sometimes bitter incivility of discourse.”
Chakrabarti called for attention to “insensitive and incendiary language, metaphors, distortions and comparisons”. On discourse relating to Israel/Palestine, she advised “critics of the Israeli State and/or Government” to “use the term ‘Zionist’ advisedly, carefully and never euphemistically or as part of personal abuse”. She recommended that Labour members “resist the use of Hitler, Nazi and Holocaust metaphors, distortions and comparisons”, saying “surely it is better to use the modern universal language of human rights, be it of dispossession, discrimination, segregation, occupation or persecution and to leave Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust out of it.” Chakrabarti made clear that “denial, approval or minimisation of the Holocaust and attempts to blur responsibility for it, have no place in the Labour Party.”
Her report argued for work towards enhancing free speech on contentious issues within the Party, through debate based on civility and education. It argued against tactics to shut down debate such as allegations of guilt by association. It also argued for very clear and transparent procedures for dealing with disciplinary issues that included “resort to a greater range of disciplinary sanctions short of expulsion; though expulsion may no doubt be necessary in some cases of gross, repeated or unrepentant unacceptable behaviour.”
I was physically present at the launch of the Report where Shami Chakrabarti’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s speeches introducing the Report were very well received by the interested parties invited to the event. The event, however, was marred by a side conflict that was grossly distorted and dishonestly reported in the press, but it was seized upon by those who were determined to discredit this valuable initiative.
The Leaked Report provides several convincing examples which show that staff members opposed to the leadership worked to undermine the Chakrabarti Report and block or subvert key aspects of its implementation, including removing it from the Party website for a significant period.
One of the ironies of the failure to fully implement Chakrabarti’s Report is that many left wing Jewish Labour Party members, with long records of anti-racist and anti-fascist activism, but who do not consider themselves Zionists, have found themselves bizarrely labelled as “antisemites” for expressing their strongly held views on Israel/Palestine and Zionism, and have been subject to heavy-handed disciplinary processes within the Party.
I very much hope that one of the conclusions of this Inquiry into the Leaked Report will be to stress the value of implementing the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report in full for the benefit of the Party as a whole to strengthen its internal culture of free speech, debate and education and put absolutely transparent and fair disciplinary procedures in place.
Final comments on the Leaked Report
What shocked me when reading through the Leaked Report was the severity of the language that constituted the incidents I have described in my “Category 1”. It was the kind of language you would expect to hear among fascist groups. I still cannot comprehend how it was possible, even though numbers were very small, for the views of such people not to have come to the attention of local Party officials earlier.
Equally disturbing, though, was the revelation, meticulously documented and referenced in the Leaked Report, that the staff in the Legal and Governance Unit, whose appointment preceded the changes in leadership, had sat on these cases for the amount of time they did doing nothing about many of them; and that when the Labour leadership enquired as to the numbers of cases and how they were progressing, it seems they were deliberately given misinformation by the salaried staff of the Party.
If the allegations in the Leaked Report are true, and they do seem very convincing, then it would appear that the Party’s handling of complaints of antisemitism was hindered primarily by former senior officials’ factional hostility towards the new Labour leadership in general, and Jeremy Corbyn in particular. They appear to have dedicated far more energy to the work they were doing against the leadership, than the work they were employed to do for the Party, and they were quite happy to permit a lazy media narrative to fester that incorrectly pointed the finger for failures on these cases’ progress on the Labour leadership.
One such case where the Leaked Report evidence suggests that these staff members prioritised work serving factional hostility brings back particularly unhappy memories for me personally. That is the section which describes the strenuous efforts to conjure up excuses to disenfranchise large numbers of potential voters in the leadership contests of 2015 and 2016 through a “Trot Hunt”.
One of the victims of that was a close friend, a Jewish working class activist, in his early 70s. He was a lifelong socialist, trade unionist and anti-fascist, who knew that socialism was not simply about having progressive ideas but acting on them. During the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, he joined with other solidarity campaigners in a convoy of lorries, delivering “Workers Aid” to Bosnian families and communities in besieged Tuzla.
He had medical problems in later life, none of which were life-threatening but they restricted his mobility and meant he couldn’t be as active as previously. He contacted me and my wife by phone in a very agitated state late on the Saturday night before the deadline for voting in the 2015 leadership election. He had just been informed by email from the Labour Party, out of the blue, that his vote in the leadership contest had been nullified.
We spent quite a while trying to calm him down and we promised that we would send him some suggestions the next day of people he might contact to get this looked into and hopefully rectified. He was still very agitated when we said goodbye. We sent through some suggestions the next day but never heard back from him. A few days later he was found dead in his flat.
The reorganisation of the Legal and Governance Unit under Jennie Formby and significant changes in personnel undoubtedly brought about an improvement, not least in the provision of clear information about the number of cases and details about what stages in the process they were at. What was really striking in that section of the Leaked Report was the determination, under Formby’s supervision, to re-investigate a number of those really shocking cases of antisemitism that had been neglected or not followed through under the previous arrangements. If my understanding is correct, then many of those who had escaped the disciplinary process were informed they were under investigation again and moves were being made that might result in expulsion. A number of them jumped before they faced being kicked out.
As a Jewish member of the Party I very much hope that the credibility of the Leaked Report will be established through your Inquiry and that the record can be put straight to the media and the general public about who was actually trying to deal with antisemitism and who was hindering that process.
I started this submission with some background information about myself in terms of my work not just around antisemitism but also around other forms of racism. For me racism is indivisible, as are the responses to it. If the well documented allegations in the Leaked Report are true, the problems it identified went well beyond an inadequate response to antisemitism. They also reveal an incredible level of puerile and vicious targeting by certain employees in the Legal and Governance Unit of perceived political opponents who were black, women, or people with mental health problems. That is completely unacceptable anywhere, but scandalous in a Party committed to respect and equality. I am eager to see what specific recommendations will be forthcoming to ensure that such shameful episodes can not recur.
rebel notes 
