After two years of excuses and delays the Forde Report was finally published yesterday, and it makes for grim reading. It confirmed what many of us already knew: right-wing Labour staffers used their positions to obstruct and undermine the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, despite his democratic mandate from hundreds of thousands of party members. Perhaps most shamefully, the report also lays bare how the serious issue of antisemitism was used by these staffers as a weapon in their sabotage operation.
The report states that there was a âconviction that the end of Jeremy Coynâs leadership (be it brought about by the PLP or electoral disaster) would be good for the partyâ and that members of the senior management team were âfocused on what they saw as protecting the party from Jeremy Corbynâ and engaging in âstraightforward attempts to hinder [the leaderâs office] workâ.
This included attempts to shape the leadership election outcomes against Corbyn in 2015 and 2016 through vetting Corbyn supporting members â or âtrot huntingâ as staffers called it â and peaked at the deliberate undermining of Labourâs 2017 general election operations, when senior staff covertly diverted resources to âsitting largely anti-Corbyn MPsâ, instead of âpro-Corbyn candidates in potentially Tory winnable seatsâ. This is unforgivable. Whilst members from across the political spectrum of the Labour Party were working day and night to elect a Labour government, these people were undermining us at every turn.
As Forde describes, the obsessive opposition of right-wing staffers to Corbynâs administration fuelled a toxic and abusive culture where racism and misogyny were commonplace, as evidenced in the WhatsApp conversations exposed in the leaked report. Karie Murphy, a senior staffer in Corbynâs team, was called a âcrazy womanâ and a âbitch face cowâ and the first Black, female MP Diane Abbott was described as âtruly repulsiveâ and âa very angry womanâ â a common slur against Black women. These staffers joked about seeing Abbott âcrying in the loosâ. The report also finds that during this period, BAME and female MPs were not afforded the same âlevel of instinctive respectâ as their white or male counterparts.
Equally shamefully, Forde finds that the obsession with purging left-wing members led to the mishandling of antisemitism complaints. Labourâs governance and legal unit (GLU) prioritised âsuspending members who supported Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 and 2016, over dealing with complaints of antisemitism, Islamophobia or other types of complaintsâ. Cases were delayed by headquarters (HQ) staff, who sought input on some cases and ârefused to proceed until they had itâ, only to then weaponise the responses and use them to generate âwholly misleading media reportsâ, suggesting that staff in the leaderâs office had âaggressively imposed themselves on the process against HQâs wishesâ. As Forde confirms, this was a lie.
This is shocking. Yet Forde also finds no evidence âthat the effects of factionalism have been eliminated from Party recruitment, management and promotion processesâ under the current leadership. Incredibly, Keir Starmerâs team were yesterday quoted as saying that âKeir Starmer is now in control and has made real progress in ridding the party of the destructive factionalism and unacceptable culture that did so much damage previouslyâ. Those of us on the left of the party will know that this could not be further from the truth.
The past two years have focused on continuing this factional warfare, in an attempt to purge the party of the left entirely: the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn, the silencing of Young Labour, the factional blocking of left-wing candidates, and the escalating series of unjustifed suspensions, expulsions and proscriptions. When the right claim that they have transformed the âcultureâ of the party, what they mean to say is that under Corbyn they burned the house down rather than respect the leftâs democratic mandate (âfactionalismâ) â and now they are crushing the left (âunityâ).
What should be a time for reflection and accountability is instead being used as an opportunity for chest-thumping triumphalism. What we need from the Labour leadership now is careful consideration of the Reportâs findings, guarantees that those involved in this sabotage never again join or work for the Party, and for the delayed implementation of Labourâs BAME structures to be accelerated, to strengthen the cause of anti-racism in Labour. Whatâs more, Starmer himself should commit to stop disregarding Labourâs rules to benefit his own factional agenda, as he has recently on parliamentary selections.
