Today we release our #TenPledges, identifying 10 key points we believe Labour needs to sign up to in order to begin healing its relationship with the Jewish community.We would expect candidates for Labour Leader or Deputy Leader to publicly & unequivocally endorse these in full pic.twitter.com/fN66jv00c7
— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) January 12, 2020
This Tweet has been endorsed by most of the challengers for the Labour Party leadership. I find this an astonishing abdication of leadership and an egregious act of political misjudgement.
- Against all the evidence, they accept that there is an antisemitism crisis inside the Labour Party.
- They accept that internal Labour Party processes are not fit for purpose, despite the massive progress made by Jenny Formby as General Secretary in completely revamping our procedures and dealing with a backlog of complaints and accusations, many of which proved to be unfounded.
- They accept that the Labour Party cannot be trusted to administer its own internal complaints procedure.
The result of this surrender is that they endorse giving a permanent veto to an external organization, that is unaccountable both to our members and the broader electorate, to decide if we are compliant with their demands. No other community organization based on faith, ethnic or gender identity, seeks this kind of special treatment.
Moreover, this is a gift to our political enemies. “How can we trust the Labour party to govern the country when they cannot be trusted to deal with antisemitism. They don’t even trust themselves!”
Whoever wins, these ten pledges will not automatically stand. We are a democratic party. Our National Executive Committee will have to agree to any changes in our rules and procedures. Our conference remains our supreme policy making body. And we operate in accordance with the law. How many of these pledges will stand up to legal scrutiny remains to be seen. Here is my scrutiny.
| 1. Resolve Outstanding cases: All outstanding and future cases should be brought to a swift conclusion under a fixed timetable. | Not as easy as it looks. Contested cases could face legal challenges. I foresee “Verdict first, trial later.” |
| 2. Make the Party’s disciplinary process independent: An independent provider should be used to process all complaints, to eradicate any risk of partisanship and factionalism. | How independent is the provider and if findings are appealed who hears the appeal? Who bears the costs, the Labour party or the appellant? |
| 3. Ensure transparency: Key affected parties to complaints, including Jewish representative bodies, should have the right to regular detailed case updates, on the understanding of confidentiality. | Big red lights for confidentiality and data protection here. Whatever happened to sub judice? |
| 4. Prevent readmittance of prominent offenders: It should be made clear that prominent offenders who have left or been expelled from the party. Such as Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker, will never be readmitted to membership. | Who decides who the high profile cases are? And what are these names doing here? Jackie Walker is Jewish and many of us support her reinstatement. Labour are already free to impose lifetime bans if we see fit, and to lift them in the light of fresh information. |
| 5. Provide no platform for bigotry: Any MPs, Peers, councillors, members or CLPs who support, campaign or provide a platform for people who have been suspended or expelled in the wake of antisemitic incidents should themselves be suspended from membership. | “In the wake of” suggests people like Ken Livingstone, who denies he is anti-Semitic and was suspended for bringing the party into disrepute. This is a presumption of guilt and guilt by association for those who support them. It is discriminatory and probably illegal. |
| 6. Adopt the international definition of antisemitism without qualification: the IHRA definition of antisemitism, with all its examples and clauses, and without any caveats, will be fully adopted by the party and used as the basis for considering antisemitism cases. | The IHRA began as a research protocol for academic research into antisemitism. It was not designed as a legally binding or enforceable definition. The original author, Kenneth Stern, has made this point and is worried that the IHRA definition is being used to shut down debate on Israel and Palestine. For another dissenting perspective on the IHRA see Stephen Sedley |
| 7. Deliver an anti-racism education programme that has the buy-in of the Jewish community: The Jewish Labour Movement should be reengaged by the Party to lead on training about antisemitism. | The Jewish Labour Movement is a Zionist organization that does not speak for all Jews. JLM membership is open to non Jews and people who are not Labour party members and are, in some cases, anti-Labour. Should we invite Muslim organizations to provide training on Islamophobia? Who will arbitrate if differing perspectives on the Arab/Israeli conflict inform their respective training programmes? |
| 8. Engagement with the Jewish community to be made via its main representative groups: Labour must engage with the Jewish community through its main representative groups, and not through fringe organizations and individuals. | This pledge is abhorrent. It seeks to isolate Jews who are not members of the self proclaimed mainstream groups. So called fringe organizations and individuals means, in practice, left wing Jews who do not support the BoD line. How dare they suggest that “the wrong sort of Jew” is not entitled to political engagement with and within the Labour Party! |
| 9. Communicate with resolve: Bland generic statements should give way to condemnation of specific harmful behaviours, and where appropriate, condemnation of specific individuals. | This is a bit rich considering that most of the allegations against Labour have not featured specific harmful behaviours. Most of the evidence is taken from social media posts by people who claim to back Labour but are not members. I do not know of any Labour Party member who has been convicted of a hate crime against Jews. |
| 10. Show leadership and take responsibility: The leader must personally take on the responsibility of ending Labour’s antisemitism crisis. | Who decides when the “crisis” ends, the Leader or the BoD? And how can the Leader take responsibility for something that is outsourced in pledge 2? Is it like the neverending war on drugs or the war on terror? Will there always be an iota of antisemitism to be eradicated before the crisis can be said to have ended? |
Since I began this post many people on Twitter have made similar points and helped to clarify my thinking. Let this one stand for all.
I think we all know these Ten Commandments are legally, and morally unacceptable to a British Political party
The question I'd like answered is why barristers such as @EmilyThornberry and @Keir_Starmer saw fit to accept and pledge to them without hesitation? https://t.co/BTHQUMcKvg— Carole-Anne Collins (@MsCCollins1) January 13, 2020
I understand that all the Labour candidates want to draw a line under antisemitism and move on. These pledges will have the opposite effect of underlining antisemitism and making it a permanent feature of any discussion of Labour Party politics. It was elements of the Labour right, some of whom have now left the party and openly back our political opponents, who originally weaponised antisemitism as a rod to beat the backs of the Corbyn left. But it has been taken up by the Tories and their media allies to smear the whole of the Labour Party. The abject acceptance of the ten pledges will not appease them. It will encourage them.
There are a few anti-Semites in the Labour Party but there is no crisis. We are not an antisemitic party. We should stop apologising. It is time to stand up to the bullies and stand by the socialist Jews who have taken so much abuse from right-wing establishment Jewish figures because they stand by us. Solidarity!