Keir Starmer: his response to the EHRC report on Labour anti-Semitism is a betrayal of party members and former party members who were falsely accused.
Keir Starmer: what a piece of work!
Responding to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report that found Labour was not guilty of “institutional anti-Semitism” – and to Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to it, Starmer said that anybody who claimed complaints of anti-Semitism against Labour were “exaggerated” has “no place in the party”.
But the fact that complaints were exaggerated is recorded in the EHRC report.
It shows that the party was unfair to the respondent – the person complained about – in 42 of the 70 cases that it investigated.
This indicates that the extent of anti-Semitism in Labour was inflated by people making false accusations – and that Labour Party officers helped perpetuate this myth.
This Writer was among those who bore the brunt of this discrimination. I was expelled from the party under false pretences and had to go to court to point this out. The verdict in my case against the party for breach of contract will be announced on November 24.
In the meantime, I await an announcement of action against those party officers who used the complaints process to attack innocent members.
I fear I may be waiting for a long time.
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The Labour Party discriminated against people who had been accused of anti-Semitism in a majority of its investigations, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found.
The report states: “Overall, we identified concerns about fairness to the respondent in 42 of the 70 sample files.” That’s 60 per cent of the cases the EHRC investigated.
Part 6 of the report covers “Serious failings in the antisemitism complaints handling system” – and This Writer can confirm the validity of its findings because I suffered many (if not all) of them while Labour was investigating – if we can call it that – a complaint against me.
To me, these findings indicate not only that the accusations against me were false but that the process of investigation was perverted in order to generate a false finding against me.
The report states that “the Labour Party has failed to publish a clear and comprehensive complaints or disciplinary policy or procedure” – now, in 2020 – despite the fact that “this failing was identified by the Chakrabarti report in 2016”.
It continues: “The Labour Party’s Rule Book has a high-level section on disciplinary measures by the National Executive Committee (NEC), and a more detailed appendix of procedural guidelines in disciplinary cases before the National Constitutional Committee (NCC). However, it does not include any procedural guidelines or information on antisemitism complaint handling. For example, there is no information on the different procedural stages of an antisemitism complaint.”
This is what I found when building my court case against the party for breach of contract (I said it had broken its own rules in the investigation against me): to find the procedures that should have been followed at the time of my investigation (but weren’t) I had to go to a document published online by the Huffington Post, in a report on how they were to be changed.
The EHRC report goes on to discuss a “lack of clear and fair process for respondents”. It states: “In 2017, the NEC Organisational Committee identified principles for disciplinary processes. This included that anyone accused of a disciplinary breach should be made aware of the nature of that breach in a ‘timely fashion’, and that NEC guidance notes should be drafted to ‘advise any persons under investigation of their rights and responsibilities’.”
I can assure you that this did not happen to me. The letter of suspension I received from Sam Matthews did not mention any rights that I may have had in the matter, and the only reference to the nature of the breach was the fact that the Campaign Against Antisemitism had published an article accusing me of anti-Semitism. I was never told the nature of the actual charges against me during the course of the investigation that took place between May 2017 and January 2018. When I finally got to see them in July that year – in the run-up to my hearing before the National Constitutional Committee – none of the claims in the CAA article were mentioned at all.
The report then goes into specifics:
“Our analysis of the complaint sample showed that:
• Some letters of administrative suspension failed to identify the underlying
allegations, or did so in a vague manner.
I have already demonstrated that this was true in my case.
• The system for explaining allegations to respondents and giving them an
opportunity to respond was not always effective.
After I was advised that my party membership had been suspended in May 2017, I received no contact from the Labour Party until October that year, when I was invited to an interview with an investigating officer (IO) at Transport House in Cardiff. I was not given any advance information about the allegations he was going to discuss and in the interview itself he did not explain what the allegations were. I was expected to respond “off the cuff”, rather than being given an opportunity to prepare a detailed defence with reference to the appropriate material.
• Some complaint files did not hold the identity of the complainant.
• Respondents were not told the identity of the complainant even when there
was no obvious reason to withhold their identity.
I have never learned the identity of the person who complained about me – despite several requests. Labour’s attitude was that it was of no concern to me.
• Respondents were not generally given an expected timeline for the
investigation
After attending the interview in October 2017, I was left in limbo again until December, or January the following year, when I was told informally that my case would be heard by the NEC at its next meeting. I received no official communication from Labour about it.
The next section discusses “inconsistent application of administrative suspensions” and states:
In our complaint sample we saw that:
• Suspension or removing a suspension took place in response to external
pressures.
• There was political interference in suspension decisions (we explain this in
Chapter 5).
• The Labour Party almost never kept written reasons for a decision to
suspend or a decision to lift a suspension.
I cannot comment on this as I have no information on whether my suspension took place due to external pressures or as a result of political interference. I did submit a Subject Access Request to the Labour Party, to find out more about the process, but when I finally received a response two years and two months later, much of it was blacked out.
The next section is headed “poor record-keeping” and stated that “there were documents missing in 62 of our 70 sample files”. I have no idea if documents were missing from mine as Labour has withheld that information from me.
The next section is about a “lack of guidance to the NEC and NCC” but I’ll skip that because it leads directly to something I can discuss: “unclear decision-making by the NEC and NCC”.
“NEC and NCC panels make decisions on suspension and expulsion, among
other matters,” the report states. “Given the potential consequences for the person being accused, we would expect detailed notes of NEC and NCC meetings, and the reasons for their decisions, to be recorded. This is also essential to ensure confidence in the process and to allow monitoring of decisions.
“However, the Labour Party informed us that it does not keep detailed notes of NEC antisemitism panel meetings and the reasons for the panels’ decisions. This is particularly problematic now that the NEC has the power to expel members.”
I was never provided with reasons for the NEC’s initial decision to send me for indoctrination by the Jewish Labour Movement.
I was told about the discussion by a friendly NEC member – that my case was not on the agenda but was heard in “Any Other Business”, meaning no documentary information was provided to committee members; they were asked to listen to a verbal briefing and then come to a decision. My friendly NEC member did not, as I recall, provide any information on the reasons for their decision.
Note that I was not asked to attend and that, therefore, nothing in my defence was stated in the verbal report. I later saw a version of it (in the bundle of papers I received ahead of the NCC hearing) and it either misquoted me, twisted my words, or both. My understanding is that the only reason I wasn’t expelled on the spot was that several NEC members who were familiar with my work spoke up for me.
“We also note that an appeal to the NCC is on procedural grounds only, and question how someone can use this right properly without knowing the underlying reasoning from the NEC.”
This is curious. After I refused to go for JLM indoctrination, my case was automatically referred to the NCC. I was not informed that it was on procedural grounds; my understanding was that the panel would make its decision on the merits of the case against me and my defence against it. Indeed, I was told: “The NCC is only concerned with the procedures to be adopted after a charge is presented to it. It is entitled to act on the basis that the charge is properly brought before it and any complaints regarding the conduct of the investigation should be addresses to the General Secretary”.
The report continues [boldings mine]: “Our analysis of the complaint sample … shows that the NEC and [NCC] do not often give reasons for their decisions; where they are given, they are often not adequate to explain why an allegation is found proven. We found unclear evidence of decision-making by the NEC and NCC in 56 of our 70 sample files.”
This is clearly what happened in my case. I have seen no record of any reason given to find the case against me proven. I provided an excellent defence which was overlooked by the NEC and the NCC. Neither body provided even the slightest evidence in support of their decisions.
The next section refers to “inappropriate use of informal communications in the complaints process” and states that “The use of personal communications outside of the formal complaints process undermines confidence in the process, and affects its fairness and effectiveness.
“Because they do not form part of the complaint file process, including record-keeping, informal communications undermine scrutiny of the process.”
It goes on to discuss – and legitimise – theleaked Labour report which “referred to ‘thousands of messages exchanged on … an internal Party messaging service’ and 465,000 words in three WhatsApp groups”.
It notes that Labour did not provide these messages to the EHRC, claiming that ” it would be disproportionate and too onerous to provide this material to us”. I would have thought that would be a decision for the investigator, not the organisation being investigated.
In my own case, I am aware of only one instance of personal communication – and I found it in the files delivered to me after I made my Subject Access Request.
It refers to a complaint I made after Labour MPs Anna Turley and Wes Streeting referred to a Sunday Times report that I was an anti-Semite (using information leaked from the NEC meeting), and discusses the relevance of this matter to my NCC hearing which was still several months away at that time.
It states: “He will rightly say it is impossible to have a fair hearing if his case has been discussed publicly by senior party members, and we won’t be able to apply any sanction without it being subject” and the rest is blacked out. I subsequently received an email response saying that the matter was not a suitable subject for a complaint to the Labour Party and would be taken no further. This discouraged me from mentioning it at my NCC hearing or in the run-up to it. I now consider it to be clear evidence of an attempt to corruptly influence the outcome of that hearing.
The NCC hearing I attended was nothing more than a kangaroo court, as I have stated in previous articles. I was not allowed to conduct my case in the way I had expected, while the tribunal chair, at least, seemed to have made up her mind before the hearing began. When I received the decision notice it was that the charge against me was proved “on balance of probability” – which means nothing.
In summary: The EHRC report contains a wealth of information that the Labour Party did not only discriminate against Jewish people (and/or anybody else) complaining about anti-Semitism; it also discriminated strongly against the majority of people accused of the offence, and I am able to provide proof to support the EHRC claims.
Nobody in the mainstream media is mentioning this; neither is Labour leader Keir Starmer. They are concentrating on the claims that make Jeremy Corbyn look bad and he had nothing to do with any of the transgressions I mention above, apart from attendance at the NEC hearing.
As I mention above, I had to take a case to court in order to seek justice.
The verdict in that case is due on November 24.
What will Starmer say if it comes out in my favour?
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
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