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The Labour Party was founded over 120 years ago but has only been in power for over 30 of them. Reading the findings of the Forde report, it is easy to see why it has repeatedly failed to win over the British public.
It is a party rife with internal factionalism, racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. The ‘urgent investigation’ was launched by Sir Keir Starmer the day after the leak in April 2020 of an 860-page dossier into ‘The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014–2019.’
The document was written by party staff in response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s investigation into Labour’s handling of antisemitism complaints. The report ‘thoroughly disproves any suggestion that antisemitism is not a problem in the Party, or that it is all a “smear” or a “witch-hunt”’ yet was never submitted to the Commission.
Starmer’s intervention, just days after becoming the leader, was to push the scandal down the road in what turned out to be over two years after repeated delays. It may be diluted, but it makes little difference to the dossier that there is “no evidence” of antisemitism being handled differently than other complaints, while blaming “factional opposition” towards former leader Jeremy Corbyn for impeding efforts to address the issue.
“The evidence clearly demonstrated that a vociferous faction in the party sees any issues regarding antisemitism as exaggerated by the right to embarrass the left,” Forde explained in the Forward of his report.
“It was, of course, also true that some opponents of Jeremy Corbyn Thus, rather than confront the paramount need to deal with the profoundly serious issue of antisemitism in the party, both factions treated it as a factional weapon.”
If it is also true, campaign funds were secretly used by sections of the party to undermine Corbyn’s Labour from winning the 2017 election.
Rather than uniting the opposition, Starmer has purged Corbynites since assuming leadership. Forde said that it was a “racist, sexist and otherwise discriminatory culture” that was undermining Labour’s efforts to promote itself as being “in the vanguard of diversity and inclusion.” If efforts failed to address complaints of antisemitism, endemic issues of Islamophobia and other [forms of] racism have never been tackled.
It is not only the disciplinary process that is not fit for purpose, but the way Labour is run and managed. Forde details a party out of control, but offers hope that it can move above factionalism if its advice is heeded.
Professors of education within Jewish Voice for Labour have welcomed the encouragement for a shift towards participatory education about racism and a return to civility within the Labour Party and beyond over contentious matters. Such training sessions failed to provide what was called “a space in which difficult issues, such as attitudes towards Israel, can be safely explored, in a nuanced way.”
But it also must go much further in its soul-searching, including what the author of the report describes as “a culture of intellectual smugness” at the extremes of the political spectrum of the party.
This has led to the dismissal of valid, albeit uncomfortable, views. Never again can the tail be allowed to wag the dog for political advantage by one section or the other. After nearly a month or more, the views of Starmer are yet to be heard. A good start would be to admit that Labour has had problems with inclusiveness, but that all must be accommodated.
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Labour undermined by factional, discriminatory culture, confirms damning report
