CAA’s next moves on antisemitism in the Labour Party

At our demonstration outside Labour Party Head Office on 8th April, we asked you whether we should return if there was no meaningful progress, and we tentatively set a date of 13th May, this Sunday.

Since then there has been continued bad news from the Party, and the meeting between Jeremy Corbyn, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council produced no change at all, as we predicted.

We believe that antisemites in the Labour Party and those who give them succour must face Party discipline, right up to the leader, and that is why we filed a disciplinary complaint against Mr Corbyn. Over 2,000 of us also demonstrated outside Labour Party Head Office in support of the complaint and over a thousand of our supporters added their names. That was a chance for the Labour Party to hold its leader to account and prove that its institutions still had some life left in them, but the new General Secretary has now rejected our disciplinary complaint in a manner which left us in no doubt that there will be no internal justice.

We now intend to pursue a three-pronged campaigning strategy.

First, we will continue to expose and document antisemitism in all political parties, working with our contacts in the media to ensure that failing to address antisemitism continues to exact a heavy price. We will also be updating our online database of antisemitism in political parties so that there is clearly-documented evidence that the problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party goes far beyond that in other political parties.

Second, we are now investigating with a team of very senior lawyers whether legal action can be taken against the Labour Party to ensure that disciplinary complaints are properly processed, starting with the one against Mr Corbyn. As soon as we can, we will tell you more about it.

Third, we will be launching a cross-party, cross-community initiative, and for that we will need to rely on your vociferous support.. For that reason we have decided not to go ahead on 13th May and instead we will be asking you to stand with us on a future date as soon as we are ready (if you had booked train tickets to come to London on 13th May, please send receipts to [email protected] and we will reimburse you).

We appreciate that parts of this update are very light on detail, but that is as much as we can say at the point and we did not want to wait any longer without talking to you about our strategy.