How Labour is bankrupting itself to fight the left - #42
Anti-Semitism smears are still the main weapon being used to purge the membership.
Big story this week. I reported for The Electronic Intifada on the most extraordinary measures the Labour Party has taken to pursue staff who tried to blow the whistle on the internal party sabotage that took place during the Jeremy Corbyn years.
We obtained a secret document written by Labour lawyers laying out everything they did to pursue the April 2020 leakers of the report — despite admitting they had had “valid concerns” and that there was “an overriding public interest” in publishing information the report contained.
The newly obtained secret document explains that Labour spent an eye-watering £1 million on specialist lawyers, forensic investigators and consultants to find the leakers and cover up the report.
The lawyers wrote threats to journalists and others who had posted the leaked report — or parts of it — online, demanding they take it down. Some did but others didn’t. The full document can still easily be found online by searching for its title (“The work of the Labour Party Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019”) — you can also read a summary and long extracts in my report from the time.
All this despite the fact that Labour’s lawyers admit in the secret document that the leaked report posed only “minor online risk to data subjects”:
Read my full article for more extracts from the secret document and for the full story.
On Sunday I also appeared on Crispin Flintoff’s excellent live programme Not the Andrew Marr Show, to discuss the secret document with co-host Tina Werkmann. You can watch the segment back in the video above.
With a membership decline of around 200,000 people since right-winger Keir Starmer took over, the Labour Party is essentially bankrupting itself in order to chase out the leftists. A very sad tale all round.
My other article this week was all about the student protests outside Cambridge Union — an elite private members club and “debate society” which hosted racist Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely last week.
More than 100 students protested against her, disrupting and apparently curtailing her speech. According to reports from inside the room, even some of her audience made her feel quite unwelcome.
UCU @ucu
Nadhim Zahawi's comments should deeply alarm not only all those concerned with the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, but anyone who wishes to preserve democratic freedoms from authoritarian encroachment. Our joint statement with @nusuk: https://t.co/J2tw5euX71In related news, the National Union of Students and the University and College Union issued a joint statement backing protesters’ right to use the common Palestinian chant: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” Education minister Nadhim Zahawi — in an interview with racist anti-Palestinian newspaper The Jewish Chronicle — suggested that using the chant should result in police action.
Tweet of the Week
Asa Winstanley @AsaWinstanley
Tonight: We've obtained a top secret @UKLabour document which says the party allocated more than £1 million in a vain effort to remove the #LabourLeaks document from the internet and persecute its alleged leakers. Read all about it here: https://t.co/Xv18Q94FRg
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