Thread by @_petermason

THREAD: A little anecdote about antisemitism, integrity and the Labour Party.

Just over a year ago, about half an hour after news broke about Corbyn’s defence of “that” mural, we were due for a @JewishLabour stakeholder ‘check in’, at Norman Shaw South...

Back in the day, these were pretty normal events. I’d only just started doing them following well documented changes to JLM’s leadership. I normally stayed away from LOTO and concentrated on HQ stuff.

Then, whilst difficult, there was always a rationale for engagement...

What followed from Passover 2018 onward however soured much of what came next.

Then, we’d not long passed a rule change that specifically made antisemitism and other discrimination “prejudicial and grossly detrimental behaviour”. There was talk of extra staff to handle cases...

In the meeting I met the LOTO stakeholder manager for the first time, and they were joined by the Party Chair’s Political Adviser.

One is now Director of GLU, the other Head of Complaints...

I’d remembered the artwork from 2012 when I worked for @JewishLondon. It caused a stink. Even Lutfur Rahman agreed it needed to come down.

But I also put it in context. Juxtaposed against the sinister and populist “Not the Few” addendum to the hopeful “for the many”...

I talked about how the peculiarisms of antisemitism, how it manifests itself in some streams of anti-capitalist anti-elite thinking.

I explained how it felt like the same kind of “othering” the extreme-right attempt with other minority communities. Brexit...

Negativity and blame put on the shoulders of the undefined perpetrators, with the audience left to “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” work it out.

“You have to made it clear and unequivocal” I said. “This is how it will be received”...

It took the Party a full weekend, and three attempts at an apology before anything resembling what would suffice surfaced.

Corbyn was ‘uncontactable’. He would later at Conference 2018 walk back the eventual third apology on Marr...

The then LOTO Stakeholder Manager and Party Chair Political Adviser got a front row seat to that episode.

They knew who said and did what.
They knew who attempted not to say or do. As they have on countless occasions too long to list in this thread...

Not least have they both been embroiled in decision making on antisemitism disciplinary cases that, as has been reported, are allegedly woefully inappropriate at best...

The definition of an institutionally racist organisation was postulated by McPherson “the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin"...

“seen or detected in processes, attitudes, and behaviour, which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping, which disadvantages minority ethnic people"...

The Party leadership, in response to EHRC interest, seem to blame everyone who came before them, even when they know their own actions and agency in everything that has flown from and before the mural, the protest, the redefinition, the code, the caveat, the interventions...

I don’t really make anecdotes public. It’s difficult, partly because you question your own naïveté engaging over such a long time in good faith, whilst also saying stuff that you know Party staff can’t personally and publicly rebut (the Party Press office do that job instead)...

But everyone has agency. No one need be an active bystander. I’ve stayed quiet on enough things in the past in the interests of acting as an honest broker, when others weren’t honest with me, to feel constantly rotten about where we are now...

As per their predecessor, the new Head of Complaints will be responsible for a team that does the immediate first assessment of any new complaint, before it gets sent up the chain for a decision by the Director of GLU...

These are vitally important processes, exercised with delegated authority from the General Secretary, who in turn gets them from the NEC, and they Conference. Any failure to implement zero tolerance for discrimination is done in all our names...

You’d of course hope that this would be done with integrity and objectivity. I’m afraid my experiences have taught me that in today’s complaints and diciplinary processes, it’s simply no longer possible. Regardless of the individual.

Only true independence will suffice.

P.s. Chag Sameach ⏲🍕