At a demonstration earlier this year, by chance, I bumped into a former Labour MP and veteran activist, unafraid to speak out about Palestine, whom I hadn’t seen for ages, and we had a lively chat. She told me about her neighbour’s deep frustration about the endless delays regarding the publication of the Forde Report. Her neighbour was Martin Forde.

Just a few weeks ago, I was reflecting that all those social media posts I had written since late 2020 that ended: “Forde Report now!” might as well have said “Waiting for Godot”. But this chat certainly lifted my low expectations about it, if it did eventually appear.

Whatever pointed criticisms Forde might draft, I still anticipated they would be watered down enough so that Starmer, and his closest New Labour advisers’, might have to acknowledge it.

Partly, that is what we got. Its pervasive framing is a party at war with itself because of “toxic factionalism”, for which more zealous activists of the left and right are deemed equally responsible. For every mis-step by party HQ, which was solidly in the hands of the Right, and he identifies several, Forde tries hard to find equivalent mis-steps and defensive attitudes on the Left in LOTO’s office. But there is a difference. The criticisms he makes of the Right are backed with solid evidence; those aimed at the Left are much more speculative and evidence-free, or they are quotes from submissions by right-wing members of the party, including HQ staff.

Thankfully, Forde frequently contradicts his own “even-handed” framework,  as he exposes the Right’s shenanigans and dishonesty (while trying, unconvincingly, to suggest they don’t necessarily reflect bad faith). Very importantly, It confirms and bestows credibility on the key allegations of the explosive Leaked Report that Forde was investigating. 

In the foreword, he makes a telling comment: “Within minutes of the NEC confirming my appointment, and before I was informed by the Party… I started to receive emails from some of those named in the Leaked Report, and lawyers’ letters threatening me and other Panel members with legal action if we examined data referred to in it.” There is no parallel statement regarding those in what he calls the “Left faction”.

Forde’s criticisms were both stronger and deeper than I anticipated. Which is why Starmer, and the sycophantic media, who see him as a safe pair of centrist hands after the Johnson debacle, are determined to ignore it and bury it. We must not let him, or them.

One media outlet that paid extraordinary attention to Labour under Corbyn was the Jewish Chronicle (JC). This “newspaper” has always presented itself as the “voice” of the Jewish community, and is cynically treated as such by opportunist non-Jewish commentators with clout who don’t give a damn about Jewish people but relished the opportunity to piggy-back the JC’s war against Corbyn. Its print circulation has plummeted among a community conservatively estimated at less than 300,000 people, to barely 20,000 copies. A third of those copies are given away free. Some 20 years ago that print figure was 80,000 and free copies were far fewer.

It never was the paper of “the Jewish community” in a representative sense. In the 1930s swathes of working class Jews ignored and ridiculed it when it told them to stay indoors as Mosley’s fascists were about to invade their community in London’s East End. The JC said that any Jews who demonstrated and got involved in disorder would be “actively helping antisemitism and Jew-baiting”. Mind you, the Board of Deputies, another establishment body with a severe democratic deficit, made the same wrong call.

For many years the JC has been controlled by conservative and right wing Zionist elements. During the Corbyn years it was edited by the intellectually-challenged Stephen Pollard, a defender of right-wing, islamophobic commentators here and abroad, who transferred to the JC from the rabidly anti-immigrant, anti-refugee Daily Express. In 2006, he stated: “The mainstream Left has demonstrated clearly which side of the battle to preserve Western civilisation and freedom it is on. The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy.”

Finally recognising his disastrous effect on circulation, the paper recently moved him upstairs, but when I saw that the Jewish Chronicle absolutely hated the Forde Report, that was an indication to me that it was saying something worthwhile.

Forde identified the hierarchy of anti-racisms that the party concerns itself with, strongly implying that anything other than antisemitism seemed to be marginalised, ignored or even tolerated. And he dared to criticise the “training” on antisemitism being offered by Starmer’s favoured Labour Jews, the (overwhelmingly right wing) Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) as, ”didactic, top down and one dimensional”. Its “sub-optimal” lecture format did not  “provide  a  space  in which difficult issues, such as attitudes towards Israel, can be safely explored, in a nuanced way,” and did not “encourage deep  reflection”. If you think that criticising the obvious racism of Israeli government policies, or the Board of Deputies is difficult within Labour today, try criticising the JLM without being called an antisemite.

Forde heaped praise instead on the Pears Institute (recently renamed the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism), an institution known for its “evidence-based and academically credible” work on the history, culture and politics of antisemitism, which treats antisemitism as one form of a larger problem – racism. Unfortunately, Forde failed to mention that it was Corbyn’s team that brought the Pears Institute in to assist with the party’s work against antisemitism, and Starmer has since dumped them in favour of the heavily factionalist JLM – a body that claims to represent Jewish party members but insists that members sign up to its explicitly Zionist constitution.

Agreeing with the Pears Institute, Forde is scathing about the “Zero tolerance” approach, so central to JLM/Starmer’s work to allegedly root-out any antisemitism in the party by disciplinary measures. Who can forget the rousing applause that Angela Rayner got for her speech at the event hosted jointly by Labour Friends of Israel and JLM in November 2020, when she defiantly claimed that she was willing to “suspend thousands and thousands of members” in order to “get real” about antisemitism. Rayner and Starmer both spoke at the event, crassly (or deliberately) arranged for the same date as the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Leaders of a party that claims to stand against racism and oppression not just locally but globally, might have politely turned down the invitation, and found a way to show their commitment instead to Palestinian rights. That thought seems not to have even entered their heads.

Despite Rayner’s wild threats, Forde states calmly that: “Although  disciplinary  action and expulsions may be appropriate in extreme cases, in many instances a meaningful  educational  and awareness building programme will be more effective.” A clear nod towards the Chakrabarti Report which advocated precisely that approach. Both she and Forde, it seems, believe that the Labour Party is not infested with evil antisemites, but by a diverse set of individuals motivated to campaign for a better, fairer world, though a small minority sometimes state things in inappropriate, hyperbolic language, and a few might actually be antisemites.

In that context, It’s plain common sense that the party should seek to challenge attitudes that, often unconsciously, cross a line, and to do so in a way that is educational, encourages members to rethink, thereby building the party’s anti-racist capacity. The biggest irony is that rather than kicking “antisemites” out of the party, it has targeted its Notices Of Investigation, suspensions and expulsions, disproportionately at left wing Jewish members, most of whom have decades of committed activism not only to Labour but to anti-racist/anti-fascist movements and human rights causes. 

Labour’s Leaked Report heavily criticised Iain McNicol’s record when he was in control of the party’s Governance and Legal Unit, and Forde noted that under him “many of the recommendations made by the Chakrabarti Report were never implemented.” I wish he had gone further. McNicol fought a war of attrition against Chakrabarti’s recommendations. An outstanding human rights lawyer/campaigner who advocated a culture of free, but respectful, speech among party members on contentious issues, who loathed petty guilt-by-association tactics to shut down debate, was a victim of this herself. She was casually dismissed as a “Corbyn-ally”, and bad-mouthed by right-wing pro-Zionist organisations that had no connection with the Labour Party at all.

At one point, under McNicol, Chakrabarti’s Report mysteriously disappeared from the Party’s website, a fact noticed by an eagle-eyed Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) member. Activists made enough noise to get it reinstated. But her very sound proposals continue gathering dust.

I just said it: “Jewish Voice for Labour”!  And Forde did too, which is why the Jewish Chronicle lost its rag completely (as did the Board of Deputies.) Forde explicitly recognised that: “there  are  other  voices [other than JLM] amongst Jewish communities and Jewish members of the Party. Hence we are disappointed that there has been a refusal to engage at all with Jewish Voice for Labour’s proposals for antisemitism education and that CLPs are, we are told, not even allowed to enlist their help.” Indeed JVL’s antisemitism training sessions, where they have done them, are non-didactic workshop-based explorations of the issues that encourage open discussion.

What the party leadership probably perceived as particularly embarrassing is Forde’s rejection of widespread media narratives around Team Corbyn’s responses to antisemitism, especially the accusation that party staff at HQ were hindered in their efforts to deal with antisemitism cases by interference from LOTO .

This was the central claim of the propagandist anti-Corbyn programme made for Panorama in 2019 which was then uncritically repeated by many media outlets. Forde concludes instead that “LOTO staff provided input into specific cases after it was sought, sometimes insistently, by HQ staff, who refused to proceed until they had it… LOTO staff responded to the requests … reasonably and in good faith.” Then a bombshell: “…their responses were subsequently used to form the basis of wholly misleading media reports which suggested that LOTO staff had aggressively imposed themselves on the process against HQ’s wishes.”

It’s a very damning assessment. The Panorama programme proved very costly for Labour both in monetary and political terms. Although party lawyers advised that Labour would win a legal challenge, Starmer rushed to cough up eye-watering payments to the Panorama “whistle-blowers” to avoid a court case. How many members’ subs and union donations were – as Johnson might have put it – “spaffed up the wall”? How many dedicated members resigned in disgust afterwards, further depleting party funds? During Starmer’s leadership some 180,000 – 200,000 members have left the party.

Forde makes another damning assessment about the “validation exercises” concerning who could vote in the 2015 leadership election in which Corbyn became leader, and in 2016 when he faced down a leadership challenge from Owen Smith. The Leaked Report reveals the particular terms fed into searches as HQ staff were trawling members’ social media accounts. Thousands were denied the right to vote.

Forde states: “The  intention and effect of both validation exercises was to remove ballots from individuals who would otherwise have voted for Jeremy Corbyn. It does not seem to us credible to  suggest  that  the  exercise  (in  particular  the social  media component) was not targeted at applicants and members on the Left.”

The Leaked Report also alleged that in the run up to the 2017 election, certain staff at Labour HQ set up the “Ergon House” operation, hidden from LOTO, to divert resources away from seats LOTO saw as winnable, to shore up instead centrist/right wing candidates within relatively safe seats. In an election that saw Labour within a whisker of possibly forming a minority government (less than 2,500 votes spread over a few key seats), HQ were accused of sabotaging a possible victory.

Ford concludes that the Ergon House operation did happen, it was deliberately kept below LOTOs radar, and was absolutely wrong. Though he mitigates that by suggesting that the sums were relatively small (£135,000), and that it was unlikely to have affected the General Election result. We will never know. 

The most egregious behaviour of HQ staff uncovered by the Leaked Report was probably the torrent of explicit racism and sexism against identified targets, especially, though not exclusively, black targets. Diane Abbott was the most high profile Black target, though Karie Murphy (white, Scottish), came in for vile abuse too. Forde confirms that that this occurred.

In the early sections of the report he coyly refers to “inappropriate” and “unprofessional” behaviour. Later, he is much more explicit labelling such behaviour ”racist” and “sexist”.

He explicitly agrees with Diane Abbott that “the  remarks  in  the report were not outliers but represented the general tone of conversation amongst senior Labour Party staff about me and other black elected members.” What remains shocking is that, although the evidence is well documented, none of the victims of that very explicit racism and sexism have yet had any acknowledgement let alone an apology from Starmer, on behalf of the party, for what was said.

There is no doubt that key aspects of the report will embarrass the current leadership, as it exposes the dishonest and vindictive war against Corbyn that took place between 2015-2019, which sought to establish damaging false narratives. But the report also has significant weaknesses. It insists on locating the problems in terms of party culture rather than the existence and abuse of power relations.

Despite the successful operation by HQ staff to prevent thousands voting in the leadership elections of 2015 and 2016 Corbyn was elected by a massive majority of the members votes, in pure numbers amassing more votes than any previous Labour leader. He did not hide his intention to democratise the party as well as society at large. He openly stated his plans to give ordinary members more power to make decisions. That the “Civil Service” of the party were so determined to thwart this was scandalous, but Forde credits them as largely good-faith actors motivated above all by concern about the future interests of the Party.  

A more obvious weakness, especially to left-wing Jewish members in that period, stemmed from Forde’s welcome acknowledgement that the issue of antisemitism had been used as a factional weapon. Members have been denounced and disciplined as “antisemites” for saying the same thing. But he provides evidence of its use to undermine Corbyn’s leadership. He ruins the moment, though, with a specious claim that both Left and Right factions treated the issue of antisemitism as a factional weapon. His comments on the Left allegedly treating antisemitism as a factional weapon too, remain evidence-free and don’t ring true.

He is forced to rest it on a claim of “denialism” – arguing that members of the left (though not the authors of the Leaked Report) denied the existence of antisemitism in the party. The only evidence he offers for this are assertions from members of the right-wing faction that this was the case.

While Forde calls out dishonest media narratives about LOTO’s response to instances of antisemitism, he remains far too accepting of false narratives spread by the same media and specific right-wing Jewish organisations, who decided there was a “crisis of antisemitism” in the Labour Party. And in doing so he fails to distinguish between “allegations” and “cases” – ie where there is evidence to corroborate the allegations.

He praises the work done by Jennie Formby from 2018-2019 that enabled the party to record and respond more effectively to allegations and deal with actual cases. He could have used Formby’s exposure of the 200 cases that Margaret Hodge suddenly lobbed in during that time, to make clear how the issue was being cynically exploited to create lurid headlines that were indeed far from the facts.

Many of Hodge’s allegations were duplicates. They actually concerned 111 individuals, not 200. It turned out that 91 of those were not Labour Party members (which might tell us something about antisemitism outside of the Labour Party). But the key fact here is that 200 allegations splashed across the media as if they were real, became just 20 cases, and we don’t even know the outcome of the cases. Some may not have been proven.

The right wing within and beyond the party were determined to do as much as they could to keep allegations of antisemitism in the headlines regardless of how much they were unjustifiably stoking up fears in the wider Jewish community, because they judged that this would damage Corbyn. Some of the wilder elements such as Campaign Against Antisemitism claimed that huge numbers of Jews would leave Britain in Corbyn got in. At the very least it would raise suspicion about Corbyn’s beliefs concerning Jews, despite his impeccable record as an MP first elected in 1983 of opposing racism and fascism and strongly supporting minority communities in his own constituency.

This manufactured “crisis” fatally undermined Corbyn’s efforts to put other issues at the top of the political agenda. Rather than wanting to use antisemitism as a factional weapon, as Forde implies, the Left of the party were desperate to talk instead about the range of issues on which Tory policy and practice was actually harming the population: housing and homelessness; Grenfell; food poverty and rising foodbank numbers; the Hostile Environment against migrants and refugees; institutional racism; the Windrush Scandal; rising transport costs; cuts to education and basic services; creeping privatisation of the NHS; not to mention exposing the Tory Party’s verifiable collaboration with Islamophobic and antisemitic parties and movements overseas in its alliances within its European Parliament Group and in the Council of Europe.

The Labour left were not denying the existence of antisemitism in the party or in society at large; they did, absolutely correctly, deny the claims that there was a “crisis of antisemitism” in the party, which made nonsense of objective reality and the lived experience of Labour Party members, including many of its Jewish members who were not signed up to JLM.

Despite its faults the Forde Report should be widely read by Labour members who should demand a mature, reflective and detailed response to it from the current Labour leader and party executive. Nothing less will suffice.