Tag Archives: equality

Ken and Pam settle legal case; EHRC, Labour and Campaign Against Antisemitism pay costs

Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley.

The basis in which the Equality and Human Rights Commission said the Labour Party committed unlawful harassment of Jewish people has been undermined after a court challenge was settled.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, when it finally appeared in late October 2020, stated that it could find only two instances in which Labour members had broken the law – involving Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley.

Mr Livingstone and Ms Bromley launched a judicial review of this finding in January 2021 – and that has now been settled out of court in a humiliating climbdown, not only for the EHRC but for the Labour Party and so-called charity the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

You see, it was the EHRC that made the offer for a settlement.

Here’s the Morning Star:

The two politicians accepted a deal offered by the EHRC, in which each side withdraws from the case and bears its own costs.

Mr Livingstone and Ms Bromley said in response to the settlement offer: “We believe that, deep down, the EHRC understands that its investigation was flawed and that it acted unlawfully.

“That’s probably why they were willing to settle the case without recovering a penny of their exorbitant costs.”

[They said:] “We were worried that the purpose and effect of the EHRC report would be to shut down criticism of Israel by giving credence to false accusations of anti-semitism.

“Rather than fighting this case for potentially another year or more, we believe we need to refocus our resources on tackling the Israel lobby’s current efforts to stifle pro-Palestine speech in schools, universities and other sectors.”

It is understood the EHRC legal costs were over £215,000, while the Labour Party and the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) also spent tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees.

Mr Livingstone’s and Ms Bromley’s costs amounted to £35,000 and were funded from a fighting fund established at the end of 2019 by former Labour MP Chris Williamson from the costs he won from the Labour Party.

The EHRC has said that it stands by its report.

But it is a claim that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If the EHRC was so sure its investigation and the report that followed it was correct, then why make an offer to settle the matter before any of the evidence has been heard?

Why deny the Labour Party – and the Campaign Against Antisemitism, that got involved for reasons that escape This Writer – the opportunity even to have their say?

If you’re sure of your facts, then wouldn’t the only reason you’d withdraw from a court case be if you could extract a statement from the other side that they were wrong?

That clearly hasn’t happened.

Draw your own conclusions.

Source: Livingstone and Bromley offered settlement after challenging EHRC over anti-semitism allegations | Morning Star


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Lisa Nandy ‘antisemitism’ interview falls apart under examination

Nandy: the mouth is open but nothing of any interest comes out.

The Starmer Party’s right-wing leaders can’t let this go, can they?

Here’s an interview with Lisa Nandy, who waxes lyrical about the so-called Labour anti-Semitism crisis and the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on it:

There are just a few problems with her interpretation. “Let’s take this line by line, shall we?” tweets Simon Maginn.

And on the basis of those two disputed cases, right-wing underlings of Keir Starmer have spent two and a half years vilifying Jeremy Corbyn.

Even now, despite the fact that the motion to have him barred from standing as a Labour election candidate doesn’t mention the EHRC report or anti-Semitism in any way, people like Nandy have been turning up all over the media with their mouths stuffed full of it.

They’re full of something, but I can describe it using only four letters.


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Observer/Jeremy Corbyn/EHRC/antisemitism footnote: article author’s ill grace

Facepalm: And quit right -what will Jeremy Corbyn (and his supporters) have to put up with next?

The author of the Observer article I criticised so roundly earlier this week has commented after (apparently) a few corrections were made to the online version.

I can only agree with Aaron Bastani:

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

And I found plenty more errors. Are they going to stay uncorrected?


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Top barrister attacks media falsehoods about Jeremy Corbyn and the EHRC report

Laughter: I doubt this has been Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the latest vain attempts to destroy his reputation, but let’s hope he gets a warm feeling from the fact that the rest of us are laughing at his detractors.

This is what I get for missing Not the Andrew Marr Show.

On Sunday, it featured award-winning human rights lawyer and former legal advisor to the Race Relations Board, Geoffrey Bindman KC, who exposed the failures of both The Guardian and The Observer to report the facts of the EHRC investigation into whether there was “institutional antisemitism” in the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn was leader.

Here’s a video clip of him doing it:

So now there’s a highly-distinguished legal analysis opposing these journalists’ unevidenced opinions.

I hear the Guardian has run more anti-Corbyn drivel on its letters page. Where’s the factual accuracy? Or did that leave mainstream newspaper reporting around the same time I did?


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Observer hack attacks Jeremy Corbyn – and triggers a war of words

Jeremy Corbyn: falsely accused YET AGAIN.

What was Sonia Sodha thinking?

“Keir Starmer was right to exile Corbyn,” she wrote. “Labour has a duty to voters, not to rebellious members.”

And: “The party leader correctly sent a signal that democracy is about winning votes, not indulging nostalgia among a minority.”

What?

Did Ms Sodha hear the same speech I did?

Starmer used the opportunity provided by the Equality and Human Rights Commission whitewashing his anti-Semitic attacks on left-wing Jews to again tar Mr Corbyn with the anti-Semitism brush, along with any Labour members who supported Corbyn’s “Scandinavian” style of socialism.

And then Starmer told socialists across the party that if they didn’t like his leadership, he wanted them to get out.

So anybody who takes his advice won’t be voting for him, then. So much for Starmer’s duty to voters and to winning votes!

I don’t see where nostalgia figures in what happened at all.

And that’s just looking at the first two paragraphs of Ms Sodha’s Observer article!

She makes basic errors of fact:

  • The EHRC’s report of 2020 did not find Labour responsible for “institutional antisemitism” as she claimed – indeed, it ruled that Labour was not guilty of such an offence.
  • Ken Livingstone – and Pam Bromley – may have been found to have unlawfully harassed Jewish party members, but both are currently (as far as I can tell) embroiled in court action against the EHRC over this claim; it is wrong for her to publicise the former without also confirming the latter.
  • Claims of “appalling” abuse against Luciana Berger from within the Labour Party have been debunked (although she did receive abuse from right-wing activists who had nothing to do with the party)(there are far too many examples for me to provide links here); Margaret Hodge submitted hundreds of complaints – the vast majority of which had nothing to do with Labour Party members.
  • Jeremy Corbyn did not accuse the EHRC of the EHRC of “dramatically overstating” the extent of antisemitism in the party “for political reasons”; he said that, in general, the scale of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party had been overstated by its political opponents.

  • Mr Corbyn has no reason to show contrition because he had not “presided over” anti-Semitism in his party. In fact, he worked hard to eradicate it and succeeded in reducing it until anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was far below not only that in other political parties but also well below the national average as well. Under Mr Corbyn, Labour really was the safest place for Jews. That is not true under Keir Starmer.

And let’s have a few facts that she missed:

  • The report said that Labour discriminated against people who had been accused of anti-Semitism in 42 of the 70 cases the EHRC examined, meaning complaints were exaggerated.
  • The report wrongly blamed Mr Corbyn’s Labour leadership for failing to do enough – or act quickly enough – to implement recommendations for improvements, but it also showed that this situation was quickly put right when Jennie Formby took over from right-wing factionalist Iain (now Lord) McNicol as general secretary; it was party officials working under him who had been dragging their feet.
  • The leader’s office was found to have interfered in several investigations – but often the prejudice was against the people who had been accused of anti-Semitism, and not against anybody Jewish.

So Ms Sodha’s claim that Starmer’s decision was “principled” and “morally correct” because Mr Corbyn hasn’t shown any contrition for the anti-Semitism he “presided over” is baloney because he didn’t preside over it – he worked hard to stop it.

Starmer’s decision therefore comes across as narrow-minded factional hysteria. Ms Sodha’s description of him as a “leader of integrity” is risible; he has opportunistically hung an unwarranted attack against an innocent man on the EHRC’s announcement.

Ms Sodha says Mr Corbyn’s “deep unpopularity in 2019 was a significant factor in Boris Johnson’s resounding victory” but fails to accurately record the reason for that unpopularity: false media reporting of issues like anti-Semitism that has clearly gone uncorrected in the mainstream media to this day.

Still, she gets one aspect of Starmer’s leadership right: he’ll sacrifice any and all principles in order to grasp power.

Ms Sodha wrote: “For Labour’s left flank… votes are not to be achieved at the expense of sacrificing their principles,” clearly implying that the so-called “moderates” (in reality, right-wingers who have very few political differences from the Tories) with happily go anywhere the wind blows if they think it will win them a few votes: “Democracy is first and foremost about winning votes.”

It’s Tony Benn’s argument about politicians being either “signposts” or “weathercocks”; a “signpost” always points in its direction of travel and you know exactly what they are, while a “weathercock” changes with the wind, meaning you can never trust them to do what they say they’ll do from one day to the next. Keir Starmer, as I’ve said before, is clearly a “cock”.

It follows clearly from this that Ms Sodha’s claim that Starmer’s “duty is to voters” is not how the current Labour leader sees his position; he reckons his first duty is to elevate himself, no matter what means he uses to do it. If he’ll sacrifice any policy position to achieve his aim (and remember, he has ditched all 10 of the pledges he made when he was seeking election as party leader), then voters cannot know what he will do and he clearly feels no duty to them at all.

She goes on to attack democracy; if members of the Labour Party can’t have equal say in the election of a Parliamentary candidate, then democracy has been betrayed. If party leaders can override constituency members in choosing who will represent them, then democracy has been betrayed. Ms Sodha denies this.

“It is fundamentally undemocratic to give the small, unrepresentative sliver of voters that constitutes the Labour party membership too much power to impose a leader that neither the party’s MPs, nor the country at large, think is decent and competent, or to impose an idiosyncratic choice of individual as a likely local MP on tens of thousands of voters,” she trumpets, unable to see the fundamental flaw in her argument.

What is that flaw? Simply that the membership of a political party describes its policies, beliefs and direction of travel – or should do so. The membership’s choice tells the voters at large what the party is about.

And – crucially – handing these important decisions over to the leadership simply gives power to an even smaller, less representative sliver of voters and must, therefore, be even more undemocratic according to Ms Sodha’s own argument.

So much for her.

The article has attracted a large amount of flak. Here’s just some of what I’ve found:

You can probably find more on the social medium of your choice.

Personally, I hope press regulator IPSO receives a barrage of complaints about this article.

Ms Sodha – and all at the Observer and sister paper The Guardian – should be ashamed.

Keir Starmer’s (and Ruth Smeeth’s) message to Labour: ‘Some Jews DON’T count’

The content of this video is self-explanatory. I think it should be shown to anybody deluded enough to think that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is now a safe space for Jews.

It’s only safe for very right-wing Jews whose allegiances belong to the fringe groups that have received the Labour leadership’s stamp of approval.

Anybody else can go hang, apparently. Isn’t that the very definition of anti-Semitism?

Have a look at the video; it’s packed with facts – I’ve already commented on the Smeeth/Anderson/whatever-she’s-calling-herself clip myself:

Shocking stuff.

More shocking because it comes with the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s seal of approval, despite having received complaints about anti-Semitism in Starmer’s Labour for years.

Which of course suggests that the EHRC is a racist organisation too.


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Is this the truth of Labour’s disciplinary process under Starmer?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s decision to whitewash the Labour Party’s disciplinary proceedings seems doubly contradictory when one considers the words of one of that process’s victims, below.

I’m aware that what’s described below isn’t directly related to the party’s policy on anti-Semitism, but it does provide revealing information on the treatment that anybody undergoing this Kafkaesque process is facing.

It seems clear that the current disciplinary process is being used as an excuse for the persecution of people who have done nothing wrong at all – the example below is of a woman who gave an interview to an organisation within the Labour Party. A year later, Keir Starmer’s bully boys and girls summarily proscribed that organisation and expelled anybody who had anything to do with it – even though they could not possibly have known that it would be proscribed at the time of their own contact.

It also seems clear that the appeal process against expulsion simply doesn’t work at all – most probably because it is run by factional party members who are bent on removing left-wingers from the formerly left-wing party.

The effect on the former party members targeted by this victimisation – this persecution – is predictable: their political careers have been harmed, possibly fatally; they have been prevented from carrying out any of the good work they had been doing previously; their reputations have suffered and they have been shunned by people who were previously colleagues; and their personal life and well-being has suffered hugely.

This is a calculated, desired result. Keir Starmer wants people like Pamela Fitzpatrick to suffer.

Few rank-and-file party members will be in a position to take the Labour Party to the High Court and seek satisfaction via litigation.

Personally, I think Ms Fitzpatrick should invite other wronged party members to join her, and make it a class action, but that’s a matter for her.

Whatever happens in court, her story serves as an example of StarmerLabour’s authoritarian – if not totalitarian – policy: it is no longer a broad church. Members must service Starmer’s increasingly right-wing demands – or he will harm them.


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Why is the EHRC letting Labour get away with overtly anti-Semitic expulsions of Jews?

Please share the image, or even tweet it to @Keir_Starmer if you like it.

Those of us who have taken to watching the anti-Semitism of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party from outside can only gape appalled at the latest announcement from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

According to that body, it is satisfied that Labour has made enough changes to the way it handles complaints of anti-Semitism to counter the criticisms it made of how the party handles anti-Semitism complaints and will be winding up a two-year monitoring process.

You can read more about that here.

But you’ll also need to be aware that since Keir Starmer took over as party leader, Labour has embarked on a programme (or should that be pogrom) of removing Jews from the party – specifically targeting Jewish people with left-wing views.

Here‘s a report from December last year, on the removal of three high-profile left-wing Jews. All anti-racists, they were accused of anti-Semitism.

Notice that, in this report, Heather Mendick commented that “her branch used to have ‘lots of active Jewish members’. All were ‘lefties’ but just one of them is still a member.”

How about the resignation from Keir Starmer’s own Constituency Labour Party of Stephen Kapos, a Holocaust survivor who the party told must choose between his duty to teach people about its horrors and Labour policy demanding he may not support a group that has been proscribed by the party (albeit for questionable reasons)?

Others who have been forced out include:

Jo Bird

Leah Levane

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

And the Jews named in this article (which I’m aware includes some of those mentioned above).

It has been claimed that Jewish Labour members are almost five times more likely to face anti-Semitism charges than non-Jewish members.

But against this background of shockingly anti-Semitic behaviour, Starmer has issued an ultimatum to all remaining left-wing Labour members: support him or leave.

The BBC reports him saying:

“We are never going back. If you don’t like it, nobody is forcing you to stay.”

What a horrifying message for Jewish members of the Labour Party.

Starmer is saying that he will continue to purge them from their political home; to deny them a voice; to remove their identity (shades of Germany in the 1930s).

And their only alternative is to leave before they are forced out.

And that is what the euphemistically-named Equality and Human Rights Commission is praising.


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Why has EHRC broken promise to investigate DWP’s role in deaths of benefit claimants?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has u-turned on a promise to investigate the role played by the Department for Work and Pensions in the deaths of vulnerable benefit claimants, it’s being reported.

Instead the EHRC are now asking the DWP to create new policies in relation to claimants with mental health issues and learning difficulties. Apparently the commission is using the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse.

This Site forced the DWP to publish figures showing that thousands of people had died of unexplained causes after being thrown off benefits by that government department and I am deeply concerned by this failure to scrutinise whether the government caused these deaths.

And how many more people have died since I exposed those deaths seven years ago?

I shall be writing to the EHRC today, seeking a meaningful explanation for this u-turn.

UPDATE: Here’s what I have written to the EHRC:

“I was the writer who forced the DWP to admit that thousands of people have died after being thrown off benefits – for no established reason. I am deeply concerned that the EHRC has decided not to investigate the DWP’s role in the deaths of claimants and is choosing only to seek an agreement to better protect claimants – similar to other undertakings that the DWP has ignored in the past, causing more deaths. The DWP will never respect the human rights, or indeed the lives, of claimants unless it is forced to do so. I am writing to you to seek an explanation for your decision that I can publish to my readers. How will you defend this indefensible decision?”

Let’s see what response – if any – I receive.

Source: EHRC Breaks Promise To Investigate DWP Role In Deaths – The poor side of life

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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Court challenge against EHRC anti-Semitism claims about Livingstone and Bromley

Ken Livingstone: he is appealing for donations to help him mount a judicial review against questionable accusations made against him by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The basis in which the Equality and Human Rights Commission said the Labour Party committed unlawful harassment of Jewish people is to be challenged in court.

The long-delayed EHRC report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, when it finally appeared in late October last year, stated that it could find only two instances in which Labour members had broken the law – involving Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley.

The report claims that Livingstone committed unlawful harassment in April 2016 when he pointed to a “smear campaign by ‘the Israel lobby’ to stigmatize critics of Israel as anti-Semitic, as well as being aimed at undermining and disrupting the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn,” in his defence of Labour MP Naz Shah.

The EHRC report said Shah had posted an image to Facebook “suggesting that Israel should be relocated to the United States” and a second post “in which she appeared to liken Israeli policies to those of Hitler.”

(For clarity: the first image was a satirical response to moves within Israel to forcibly remove all Palestinians from within the borders claimed by the Israeli government to neighbouring Arab states; the claim about the second was even more disgusting – the text, stating that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal, was pointing out that an act can be legal and still be wrong, as stated by the black man depicted in the image… probably the 20th century’s most-celebrated anti-racism campaigner, Martin Luther King. I notice EHRC does not appear to have mentioned that small but important fact.)

Shah admitted anti-Semitic intent in posting the images, although they are not inherently anti-Semitic in themselves. The third tweet mentioned in accusations against her – a claim that “the Jews are rallying” in response to a poll on whether Israel should stop bombing Palestinians to oblivion during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 – was anti-Semitic (it would have been accurate if it had said “pro-Israelis” instead of Jews).

Livingstone has always denied saying anything anti-Semitic. He says the draft EHRC report had not been sent to him before publication, which means he had not been given the opportunity to correct the record.

Livingstone’s defense of Shah included a BBC radio interview in which he accurately pointed out that in the early 1930s when he first came to power, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “was supporting Zionism.” This was perverted by critics including former Labour MP John Mann into a false claim that Livingstone was saying Hitler himself was a Zionist. That was never true; his aims and those of German Zionists coincided for a brief period, that is all.

The EHRC report does not mention the radio interview comment – which was what led to Livingstone’s suspension from the Labour Party and eventual forced resignation.

Instead it states that, merely by denying that Shah’s posts were anti-Semitic, Livingstone was guilty of “unwanted conduct related to Jewish ethnicity,” which “had the effect of harassing members of the Labour Party.”

But the anti-Semitic intent of the image posts was not apparent in the posts themselves; Shah had to admit it for it to be considered true.

This Writer is less familiar with the case against Bromley so I shall not comment on it here.

In a press release announcing the launch of the case Livingstone said,

“The EHRC’s investigation into the Labour Party was a politically-motivated attack aimed at derailing Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The Commission cobbled together a half-baked case against me, justified by a flawed legal analysis.

“This judicial review will be a vital step in correcting the record and in fighting back against a McCarthyite smear campaign which has been waged against the British Left over the past five years.”

And Bromley added,

“The EHRC Report and its dubious legal analysis will have knock-on effects for freedom of expression. The right of pro-Palestine campaigners to criticise the State of Israel and its apartheid policies is being actively suppressed.

“This judicial review will not only help to clear mine and Ken’s names, it will ensure that the EHRC Report can’t be used as a tool to bludgeon activists who dare to speak up for Palestinians.”

The judicial review is supported by the Left Legal Fighting Fund, which was set up by left-wing former Labour MP Chris Williamson, using the proceeds of a legal win against the Labour Party in 2019.

The fund is hoping to raise £40,000 towards legal costs.

Further details and information on how to donate are available from the Left Legal Fighting Fund here.

Today’s (January 14) announcement must be another blow for hard-right-wing Labour leader Keir Starmer, who welcomed the report and used it to attack former leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He keeps saying he wants to put Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis to rest – but his own activities are prolonging it.

Source: Ken Livingstone to challenge EHRC in court | The Electronic Intifada

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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