Since the Labour Party’s defeat in the 2019 General Election under the leadership of the antisemite Jeremy Corbyn, some of his most ardent supporters have sought to find a scapegoat. An idea has developed – similar to the historic “stab-in-the-back” myth – that it was the Jewish community and its supposedly false allegations of antisemitism that fatally undermined the Labour Party’s electoral ambitions. This idea has become known as “#ItWasAScam”.
The theory behind this idea is that allegations of antisemitism in Labour were a fraud, and represented an effort to smear Mr Corbyn, his supporters and the Labour Party under his leadership.
The notion that claims of antisemitism are disingenuous is the foundation of the “Livingstone Formulation”. Named after the controversial former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, the Livingstone Formulation is used to describe how allegations of antisemitism are dismissed as insincere and malevolent. Often, such allegations are portrayed as baseless attempts to silence criticism of Israel. In its report on antisemitism in the Labour Party, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that suggestions of this nature were part of the unlawful victimisation of Jewish people in the Party.
Although #ItWasAScam has not been the only attempt to undermine the finding that the Labour Party had become institutionally racist against Jewish people, it has proved the most popular and enduring. It has trended repeatedly on X/Twitter in the years since 2019, and has often been referred to whenever the Labour Party has attempted to address antisemitism on the far-left of the Party.
As with most political myths, #ItWasAScam thrives on vagueness, capturing a feeling of injustice on the part of Mr Corbyn’s most blindly loyal supporters but rarely being elucidated with actual facts and argumentation. The principal exception to this trend is a document authored by the writer and activist Simon Maginn, who is believed to have coined and popularised the #ItWasAScam hashtag.
Given the popularity of this myth, and the distress that it has caused Jewish victims of Labour antisemitism, users of social media and the wider Jewish community, Mr Maginn’s (since deleted) document – originally posted on 11th April 2021 and later, in 2023, accompanied by a graphic tweet and series of videos – merits authoritative refutation. The document is titled “Top Ten Labour Antisemitism Smears”.
Before examining the ten items, it must be borne in mind that these are only ten instances in the scandal of Labour antisemitism, which was an unprecedented development in British politics that proceeded for several years in the national spotlight and which is still in the process of remediation. Some of these ten instances, selected by Mr Maginn, received considerable media attention when they arose; others did not. Why these ten have been chosen, as opposed to the countless other allegations of antisemitism in the Party, interviews with leading Labour officials or other instances that might have been included in the document, is not known. The failure even to address the fact that these are only a sample of such instances itself exposes the document to charges of strawmanning, in which Mr Maginn has addressed only those instances that were convenient for his purposes, rather than those that were not. Even so, his analysis of each of the ten chosen instances is deficient or inaccurate and invariably misleading.
Let’s see how.
10: Chris Williamson.
Claim: Mr Williamson, then an MP, said Labour had been ‘too apologetic for antisemitism’.
BBC’s Nick Robinson tweeted it. It’s still up today.
In fact, what Mr Williamson said was this:
“The party that has done more to stand up to racism is now being demonised as a racist, bigoted party. I have got to say, I think our party’s response has been partly responsible for that because in my opinion…we’ve backed off far too much, we have given too much ground, we’ve been too apologetic…We’ve done more to address the scourge of antisemitism than any other party.”
Oddly, the last part of Mr Williamson’s statement, where he talks about ‘addressing the scourge of antisemitism’, doesn’t get quoted. This is called ‘clipping’ — extracting words from a longer speech in order to misrepresent it.
Transcript here: https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/in-defence-of-chris-williamson/
Verdict: False
Analysis
Chris Williamson is a disgraced one-term Labour MP who was suspended from the Party before eventually resigning his membership and running as an Independent in the 2019 General Election. He received so few votes that, extraordinarily for an incumbent MP, he lost his deposit. Research by Campaign Against Antisemitism shows that Mr Williamson has been involved in numerous antisemitic incidents, and since his ejection from frontline politics, Mr Williamson can be found presenting a programme on the Iranian state propaganda channel, Press TV. He has also become the Deputy Leader of George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain.
Mr Williamson’s comments quoted here were made at an event in Sheffield organised by the pro-Corbyn pressure group, Momentum, in February 2019.
With regard to the substance of the comments, Labour’s history as an avowedly anti-racist party was no defence of its descent into institutional racism under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Indeed, that very history made this development so distressing for those Jews and opponents of racism who had made the Labour Party their political home. Mr Williamson nevertheless contended that, in response to this scandal of antisemitism, the Party had been too defensive. In twisted logic, he argued that Labour had done more to address the scourge of antisemitism, seemingly without acknowledging that it was also by far the most antisemitic party, an assessment confirmed by both the Home Affairs Committee in 2016 and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2020. Both the Home Affairs Committee and the EHRC found that the Labour Party had in fact not been too apologetic for antisemitism but, on the contrary, had failed to identify and deal with antisemitism within the Party appropriately, despite numerous recommendations to improve its procedures.
In any event, this is all background to Mr Maginn’s obscure focus on a tweet by the BBC presenter Nick Robinson. Whether or not one tweet by one journalist half a year after they were made accurately represented the thrust of Mr Williamson’s remarks is immaterial. Mr Williamson’s remarks are available to watch, they were reported across the national media at the time that they were made, and they rapidly led to his suspension from the Labour Party.
Verdict: Not “false”.
9: Jackie Walker.
Claim: Ms Walker said ‘Jews controlled the slave trade’. Again, the BBC’s old reliable Nick Robinson said exactly this in a now-deleted tweet.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/ecu/tweet-by-nick-robinson-26-february-2019
In fact, what Ms Walker said was this: “Oh yes — and I hope you feel the same towards the African holocaust? My ancestors were involved in both — on all sides as I’m sure you know, millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews… and many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean. So who are victims and what does it mean? We are victims and perpetrators to some extent through choice. And having been a victim does not give you a right to be a perpetrator”.
BBC finally retracted Mr Robinson’s accusation, describing it as ‘insufficiently accurate’, and Mr Robinson was required to delete his tweet, though in so doing, regrettably, made the further smear against Mr Williamson above.
He’s prolific.
Verdict: False
Analysis
Jackie Walker is a former Vice-Chair of Momentum whose case exemplified the institutionalisation of antisemitism in the Labour Party. She was initially suspended by Labour for repeating the Louis Farrakhan-inspired hoax that Jews were the “chief financiers of the slave trade”. That suspension was lifted in secrecy and without public explanation, with that mysterious exoneration being swiftly celebrated with a public embrace from the Party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn. She went on to be suspended a second time for comments misrepresenting the inclusivity of Holocaust Memorial Day and for challenging the need for security at Jewish schools. After being suspended for over two and a half years, she was finally expelled in early 2019.
She has persistently claimed that complaints of antisemitism are part of a plot to destabilise Mr Corbyn’s leadership and has rejected the International Definition of Antisemitism. While contentiously claiming to be Jewish herself, she nevertheless alleged that Jews claim privileges at the expense of black people, at one point reportedly referring to Jewish Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge as “someone from the white millionaire elite” whom she accused of “black Jew baiting”.
She created a bizarre “Lynching” show, in which she claimed to be the victim of a “witch-hunt”, and toured it around the country – to applause, incidentally, from Chris Williamson. Meanwhile, leaders of the Party such as John McDonnell MP, then the Shadow Chancellor, have defended her. She was Chair of the antisemitism-denial group, Labour Against the Witchhunt, which was eventually proscribed by the Party.
Mr Maginn has again chosen to focus on a tweet by Nick Robinson, perhaps because the BBC’s admission that the tweet lacked sufficient context might mislead a reader of his document into thinking that portrayals of Ms Walker as an antisemite are without foundation. But the BBC’s assessment of Mr Robinson’s tweet does not in any way detract from Ms Walker’s record.
Ms Walker’s leading position in grassroots Labour groups, the Party’s reversal of her suspension and failure to expel her for several years, and her enduring popularity and influence among the far-left grassroots of the Party and even among some MPs on the far-left wing of the Party, all underscore her exemplification of Labour’s antisemitism scandal.
Verdict: Not “false”.
8: Irony.
Claim: Jeremy Corbyn said ‘Jews [or sometimes Zionists] don’t understand English irony.’
In fact what he said was this.
‘…the other evening we had a meeting in Parliament in which Manuel [the Palestinian Ambassador Manuel Hassassian] made an incredibly powerful and passionate and effective speech about the history of Palestine, the rights of the Palestinian people. This was dutifully recorded by the, thankfully silent, Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion [my emphasis]; and then came up and berated him afterwards for what he had said.
They clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history and, secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either. Manuel does understand English irony and uses it very very effectively. So I think they needed two lessons which we can perhaps help them with.’
You will note the (habitually) careful language: ‘the Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion.’ Unless you were one of the named self-identifying Zionist protesters who had disrupted the meeting in question, Mr Corbyn’s remarks about irony obviously do not apply to you. Indeed, one of the protesters, Richard Millett, is currently suing Mr Corbyn for libel — his entire case is that he is identifiable as one of the people Corbyn called ‘disruptive’ at the meeting. So unless you’re him, this isn’t about you. Or ‘Jews’. Or ‘Zionists’.
Transcript here: https://labourbriefing.org/blog/2018/8/29/full-texxt-of-that-speech-by-jeremy-on-zionists-and-a-sense-of-irony
Verdict: False.
Analysis
As research by Campaign Against Antisemitism has shown,Jeremy Corbyn has a long record of antisemitic incidents and associations with those who promote antisemitic conspiracy theories or intend harm to Jewish people. This background was increasingly known to the wider public when the historic comments quoted by Mr Maginn surfaced in the summer of 2018, which was also a time when the Labour Party was resisting adopting the International Definition of Antisemitism.
Mr Corbyn originally made the quoted remarks in a speech to a conference at the House of Commons in 2013, while he was still a backbench MP. Mr Maginn’s claim is that Mr Corbyn’s reference to “Zionists” was specific to certain individuals in the audience and was not a wider reference to British Jews more generally. The reason that it may plausibly be construed as having this wider meaning is because the term “Zionists” is often used as a dog whistle by antisemites to refer to Jews. Indeed, even Mr Corbyn recognises this, saying in his defence when these remarks came to light in 2018 that “I am now more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by antisemites as code for Jews.”
Mr Maginn claims that it is clear that Mr Corbyn was referring to specific audience members because one of them went on to sue Mr Corbyn for libel, which would indicate that that claimant must have been identifiable as the person to whom Mr Corbyn was referring. Mr Maginn is incorrect; that claimant was suing Mr Corbyn for libel in relation to comments that Mr Corbyn made on The Andrew Marr Show in September 2018, not based on Mr Corbyn’s remarks in 2013.
Mr Corbyn’s remarks were widely viewed in the Jewish community as referring to British Jews in general, accusing them of not being fully British because they did not understand English language and humour. The remarks were therefore reasonably interpreted as being scandalously racist and antisemitic. But this is equally true if the remarks were directed simply at people who identify as Zionists, and even if the comments were directed solely at the specific audience members. This is because the comments are “othering” and represent a xenophobic manner of addressing people. The comments imply that, despite living in the UK all of their lives, the people in question (be they Jews, “Zionists” or the specific audience members) were still somehow not fully English. The implication was that this foreignness was connected to their Zionist views or identity, which also happens to be an identity shared by the overwhelming majority of Jewish people. Given that centuries of antisemitic persecution have been built on the premise that Jewish people are different from the rest of the population and have different or dual loyalties, with their principal allegiance being to the Jewish people – or the Jewish state – rather than their countries of citizenship, it is understandable that Jewish people are very sensitive to any suggestion that they are not fully English.
If there was any ambiguity in the remarks, as Mr Maginn suggests, in view of Mr Corbyn’s long history of antisemitic incidents and associations the presumption was against him. Indeed, after making the remarks quoted here, Mr Corbyn was immediately followed onstage by the disgraced Rev. Dr Stephen Sizer, whom Mr Corbyn has defended despite Rev. Dr Sizer’s infamy for having promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories. Rev. Dr Sizer was eventually handed a twelve-year ban by the Church of England after having been found to have “engaged in antisemitic activity” by a tribunal of the Church of England.
Mr Corbyn’s failure even to apologise for the possibility of an interpretation contrary to whatever it was that he claimed to have meant in these 2013 remarks was further evidence that he had little sympathy for those who maintained that they had been victimised by his statement.
Following this incident, the former Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks made his first intervention on Labour’s antisemitism crisis. Lord Sacks said that the comments were “the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. It was divisive, hateful and like Powell’s speech it undermines the existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting them as essentially alien.” He described Mr Corbyn as “an antisemite”.
Verdict: Not “false”.
7: The Wreath.
Claim: Jeremy Corbyn laid a wreath at the cemetery in Tunisia where the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorists were buried.
In fact, the wreath was laid at the Palestinian cemetery in Tunisia, which has a memorial to the victims of the universally condemned 1985 Israeli bombing of the PLO headquarters, many of whom were civilians.
The Munich terrorists are buried in another country, Libya.
Corbyn was in the wrong country.
Operation Wooden Leg – Wikipedia
Operation “Wooden Leg” ( Hebrew: מבצע רגל עץ, Mivtza Regel Etz) was an attack by Israel on the Palestine Liberation…
en.wikipedia.org
Verdict: False.
Analysis
On 10th August 2018, the Daily Mail published photographs taken from the Facebook page of the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic mission to Tunisia, which showed Jeremy Corbyn laying a wreath at the Hamman Chott Cemetery in Tunis in 2014.
The Daily Mail alleged that one of the pictures showed Mr Corbyn with a memorial wreath in his hand standing feet “from the graves of terror leaders linked to the Munich Massacre”. The article went on to say: “The picture was among a number taken during a service to honour Palestinian ‘martyrs’. Buried in the cemetery in Tunisia are members of Black September, the terror group which massacred eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.”
The article proceeded to report that “sources close to Mr Corbyn insisted he was at the service in 2014 to commemorate 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a Tunisian Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) base in 1985. But on a visit to the cemetery this week, the Daily Mail discovered that the monument to the air strike victims is 15 yards from where Mr Corbyn is pictured – and in a different part of the complex. Instead he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members.
“The plaque honours three dead men: Salah Khalaf, who founded Black September; his key aide Fakhri al-Omari; and Hayel Abdel-Hamid, PLO Chief of Security. Adjacent to their graves is that of [Atef] Bseiso [PLO Head of Intelligence]. All were assassinated either by the Israeli secret service Mossad or rival Palestinian factions.”
In an article for the Morning Star newspaper a few days after his visit to Tunis, Mr Corbyn wrote about his trip, recounting how “wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died [in the 1985 Israeli airstrike] and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.”
When the Daily Mail story broke, Mr Corbyn reiterated what he had written in the Morning Star several years prior: “A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended the conference to those that were killed in Paris in 1992. I was present when it was laid. I don’t think I was actually involved in it. I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it.”
A few hours later, Mr Corbyn’s office unequivocally denied that Mr Corbyn had laid a wreath at the graves of those linked to the Munich Massacre.
However, the reference to Paris indicated that Mr Corbyn was indeed involved in a commemoration at the cemetery for Atef Bseiso, who was killed outside a Paris hotel in 1992, either by a rival faction or by Israeli security services.
Mr Maginn is correct to insist that Mr Corbyn was not present at the graves of the Munich terrorists, but that was not the Daily Mail’s claim; the newspaper reported that he was at a commemoration for “terror leaders linked to the Munich Massacre”. Given that Atef Bseiso was PLO Head of Intelligence and generally believed to have been behind the Munich terror attack, the newspaper’s contention appears reasonable, as did the conclusions drawn by its readership and the Jewish community.
In the days following the Daily Mail’s report, the Labour Party made a formal complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) against the Daily Mail, The Times, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express and the Metro, apparently for misrepresenting the event that Mr Corbyn had attended. But the Labour Party eventually withdrew its complaint, blaming leaked communications that it claimed had compromised IPSO’s investigation.
Mr Corbyn was also referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over a potential failure to declare the trip to Tunisia, especially given that guests were alleged to have stayed at a five-star hotel. E-mails from the time were leaked, suggesting that Mr Corbyn had sought to keep the costs below the reporting threshold so that he would not have to refer to the trip in Parliamentary debates. Mr Corbyn’s office eventually estimated that the trip had cost £4 less than the £660 threshold, and hence did not need to be reported.
Verdict: Not “false”.
6: Baddiel’s Leaflet
Claim: There was a leaflet at a Labour Party Conference about the Holocaust that didn’t mention Jews.
TV celebrity David Baddiel claimed in a TV promo for his book ‘Jews Don’t Count’ that he had been informed by ‘someone on the NEC’ [Labour National Executive Committee] that there had been a leaflet circulated at a Labour Conference about the Holocaust that didn’t mention Jews.
What he seems to be referring to in garbled form here is a petition by the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) in 2008 at a far-right rally in Derbyshire, which, by some unaccountable error, lists the other victims of the Holocaust but omits ‘six million Jews’. It has never been repeated, and SWP have never denied or minimised the Holocaust in any way. Ironically, the petition was specifically about remembering the victims of the Holocaust, in the face of far-right Holocaust denial.
Nothing to do with the Labour Party. Nothing to do with a Labour Conference. Nothing whatsoever to do with Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Baddiel has never, to my knowledge, been challenged on his claim, nor has he been required to show any evidence that what he claims happened ever happened at all.
Has the SWP Discovered a “Jew-Free” Holocaust?
He makes the claim here, at 55.00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_3g4UGVcNQ&t=1s
Verdict: False.*
* A previous version of this said Baddiel had said it was a ‘Labour Party leaflet’. This has been challenged, and I have been unable to verify that he did in fact use those words, so I have deleted them. The substance of his claim remains unchanged: that it was a leaflet ‘circulated at a Labour Party Conference’. No evidence of this has ever been produced, or even asked for.
Analysis
This item is drawn from a Zoom interview of the comedian and author David Baddiel, in conversation with the Jewish former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth organised by the Antisemitism Policy Trust, on 5th March 2021.
This is the full transcript of the segment:
David Baddiel (DB): “When someone says “antisemitism” [in scare quotes], I presume that’s a Labour person, who is someone who thinks it’s all smears, and it never existed or whatever. I mean one of the things that is really annoying about that is, I notice, what they tend to do, those people, is they’ll say it was all smears and, you know, it was all weaponised by the Tories or whatever, and then they’ll say ‘and it diminishes the struggle against real antisemitism’. And I always wanna say, at what point, by the way, would you recognise real antisemitism? Cause there’s all this stuff that Jews are saying that they’re unhappy with, but you’re dismissing all that as ‘smears’. So I’d like to know what you thik antisemitism, is it just genocide? Is that the only thing that counts? You know, because it’s a really extraordinary thing. They always bring it up: it’s like, the ‘real’, what’s real antisemitism. And I always thing, who’s defining that?”
Ruth Smeeth [RS]: “Yeh they think Nazis. They mean the far-right and Nazis.”
DB: “They just mean that. Yeh okay.”
RS: “I think one of the most shocking testimonies that went through, there was far-right material that was distributed at a Labour Party event, and it had been, it was a BNP leaflet, as fact. Like, a really old school proper Nazi, Jews-run-the-world stuff. And, I mean, how the Labour Party dealt with it was appalling. They asked the Jewish person who’d seen it why she’d be offended by it as part of the evidence testimony. But it just showed the circle that we’d gone on, that certain members of the Labour Party thought it was appropriate, that there was valid messaging in a far-right leaflet.”
DB: “Yeh. That is appalling. A guy called Joel Braunold, who’s on twitter, who’s a Labour Party person, or he was, told me that he was at an NEC meeting a few years ago, and this wasn’t a right-wing thing, that there had been an information or educational leaflet going around conference or whatever about the Holocaust, and it mentioned all the groups –
RS: “Yeh”
DB: – that were targeted by the Holocaust, and it included gays, and Roma, and disabled people and communists and trade unionists, and it didn’t mention Jews, right?”
RS: “It was a trade union leaflet.”
DB: “Huh?”
RS: “It was a trade union leaflet.”
DB: “Yeh. And what is incredible about that is, I am prepared to accept that the people doing that are not just straightforward antisemites. That they think they’re doing something worthwhile. Because I think they think ‘well I think it’s important to draw attention to the other people who were killed.’ Obviously it is. But not if you miss out the primary target. Then you’re doing something that’s really weird, and vile, and whatever.”
For Mr Maginn to believe that a comment made in passing in 2021 – a year after Jeremy Corbyn stepped down as leader of the Labour Party – by one commentator towards the close of an hour-long interview on Zoom that has been viewed (at time of writing) by fewer than 1,000 people and was not covered by the media, is somehow a significant milestone in the story of Labour’s antisemitism scandal is nonsensical. It is a good example of strawmanning.
Mr Baddiel does not suggest that the leaflet in question circulated during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Party; in fact, the personalities whom he references suggest an earlier time frame. Even Mr Maginn is not able to identify the incident to which Mr Baddiel is referring. But even if Mr Baddiel had been mistaken, this item is so inconsequential that no significance could possibly be attributed to it.
What is clear is that the trend of omitting or minimising the targeting of Jews in the Holocaust is not an isolated occurrence but distressingly commonplace, including on the far-left, where, for example, calls to dilute or cancel Holocaust Memorial Day recur annually. Indeed in 2011, Jeremy Corbyn himself proposed a motion in Parliament to rename Holocaust Memorial Day. During the years of his leadership of the Party, there have been plenty of concerning spectacles at Labour conferences. At Labour’s 2017 Party conference, for example, a packed fringe event heard from American-Israeli activist Miko Peled that people should be free to ask “Holocaust, yes or no” because “there should be no limits on the discussion”, for which he was cheered.
Why Mr Maginn chose not to address an episode such as that, which took place during the Corbyn era and actually contributed to Labour’s antisemitism scandal, as opposed to a wholly unimportant comment made in passing years later at the end of a long Zoom conversation that received minimal public attention, is telling.
Verdict: Who cares?
5: The IHRA definition.
Claim: Corbyn’s Labour Party was antisemitic because of its initial reluctance to adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism and all its examples.
The new head of the EHRC, Baroness Falkner, recently said the definition is ’extremely poorly worded and probably unactionable in law’ while it ‘directly conflicts with the duty to protect free speech’
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/new-chair-of-equalities-watchdog-is-against-call-for-unis-to-adopt-ihra
The Labour party have been forced to publish details of a ‘secret code’ in operation, which was an attempt to make the IHRA definition legally actionable. Corbyn was condemned for this code, which Starmer has been forced to admit he is still using.
https://skwawkbox.org/2021/04/09/court-ordered-release-shows-labour-still-using-corbyns-incendiary-code-of-conduct-despite-howls-of-outrage-against-corbyn-silence-now
Verdict: False.
Analysis
The International Definition of Antisemitism, also known as the IHRA Definition, is the globally-recognised definition of anti-Jewish racism. It was the product of years of international collaboration and careful composition. It has support from Jewish communities around the world, and has been adopted by the British Government and numerous national governments and public bodies worldwide. It is opposed only by a minute fringe of Jews and by activists, many of whom routinely breach the Definition or support those who do.
In the summer of 2018, the Labour Party became embroiled in a scandal relating to whether it would adopt the Definition in full. Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the Party resisted for several months before eventually relenting and adopting the Definition.
During this controversy, in July 2018, it was revealed that the Party had adopted a “code of conduct” relating to antisemitism that took a pick-and-choose approach to anti-Jewish racism. Effectively, the Labour Party was saying that it knew better than the Jewish community how to define antisemitism.
Specifically, the code of conduct excluded four of the eleven examples of antisemitism incorporated in the Definition; namely, accusing Jews of dual loyalty, denying the Jews’ right to self-determination, comparing Israel to Nazis, and applying double standards to Israel.
These self-evidently racist positions seem obviously omitted for one reason: the Labour Party was trying to protect its then-dominant far-left contingent, including its leader, from being held to account for past comments and activity that might breach these aspects of the Definition. After all, the best way to prevent someone being exposed as an antisemite is to change the definition of antisemitism. Whether or not such a policy is antisemitic in itself – and Mr Maginn has not provided any citations for those saying that it was – it is certainly an attempt to provide institutional protection to racists.
Verdict: Not “false”.
4: The EHRC report.
Claim: The EHRC found the Labour party ‘institutionally antisemitic’.
The EHRC report, entitled ‘Investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party’, is 130 pages long. A search of the document itself (Ctrl F) using the words ‘institutionally antisemitic’ turns up only one result, on page 127. This section is annex 7, ‘How we carried out the investigation’, and it cites a report by Professor Alan Johnson (BICOM), ‘Institutionally Antisemitic: Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the Crisis in the British Labour Party’ (March 2019). It is used as a reference for the EHRC report, and is not part of the content.
The claim is not made anywhere in the EHRC report itself. It simply doesn’t say it. Read it.
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/investigation-antisemitism-labour-party
Verdict: False
[This section has been edited for clarity. Thanks to Dangerous Globe for their input.]
Analysis
After the Labour Party repeatedly refused to investigate our complaints against Jeremy Corbyn relating to antisemitism, we referred the Party to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2018. The EHRC is an independent commission that was set up by the previous Labour Government.
At the EHRC’s request, Campaign Against Antisemitism submitted detailed legal arguments. We continued to provide additional legal arguments to the EHRC in relation to subsequent developments. Thereafter, the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Against Antisemitism Ltd made further submissions, which supported our referral.
In 2019, the EHRC announced that it was starting pre-enforcement proceedings against the Labour Party. After the Party failed to satisfy the EHRC that it could be trusted to address the antisemitism issue itself, Campaign Against Antisemitism asked the EHRC to open a statutory investigation under section 20 of the Equality Act 2006 into antisemitic discrimination and victimisation in the Labour Party. The Equality Act was legislation that had been introduced by the previous Labour Government.
On 28th May 2019, the EHRC announced a full statutory investigation, which enabled it to use its enforcement powers.
The only previous statutory investigation ever conducted by the EHRC was an investigation into unlawful harassment, discrimination and victimisation within the Metropolitan Police Service. The only other political party to have been subject to action by the EHRC was the British National Party, but that was not a statutory investigation.
The launch of a full statutory investigation by the EHRC into the Labour Party was an unprecedented development, resulting from the EHRC’s acknowledgement that the legal arguments made by Campaign Against Antisemitism were sufficiently compelling to merit investigating whether the Labour Party had committed unlawful acts.
In October 2020, the EHRC published its report into Labour antisemitism.
The EHRC did not set out to make a finding of “institutional antisemitism”, nor could it have done so, as this is not a legal category or designation. Instead, the EHRC’s objective was “to determine whether the Labour Party committed a breach of the Equality Act 2010, related to Jewish ethnicity or Judaism, against its members, associates or guests, through the actions of its employees or agents.”
The EHRC found that the Labour Party had breached the Equality Act 2010, and in its report “concluded that there were unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination [against Jewish people] for which the Labour Party is responsible.” In other words, Labour’s racist treatment of Jewish people had become so serious that it had broken the law.
The EHRC found, for the first time ever in relation to a political party, that the Labour Party was in breach of the Equality Act 2010 due to serious failings in the Party’s disciplinary procedures, including political interference in antisemitism complaints, failure to provide adequate training to those handling antisemitism complaints, serious errors within the complaints system, inappropriate applications of sanctions, unclear policy for antisemitism on social media and an overall failure of Party leadership in relation to antisemitism.
The 1999 Stephen Lawrence Inquiry’s report, commonly known as the Macpherson Report, defined institutional racism as “the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin”.
In view of the fact that the EHRC found that Labour, as an institution, was so racist that it had broken the law, it is reasonable to describe the Party as having become institutionally antisemitic. Although it was not within the EHRC’s terms of reference to make such a finding in those terms, institutional antisemitism is in essence what its report was describing.
Verdict: Strawman.
3: The Friends.
Claim: Corbyn referred to representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah as ‘our friends’.
This is so. What is missing here is context. Corbyn habitually refers to anyone at a meeting as ‘friends’. It is a boilerplate diplomatic courtesy attempting to establish a positive atmosphere to a hopefully productive meeting. It does not mean he agrees with everything every one of them has ever said and done, because that isn’t how meetings work. If it were, he would, logically, also have to agree with everything said and done by the opposing side, as well as holding all the positions of everyone he’s ever met, and I think a moment’s consideration shows this idea to be obviously absurd.
Corbyn has explicitly condemned Hamas in parliament, for instance: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/37443
Verdict: True but grossly misleading because of context-stripping.
Analysis
The groups referred to here are Hamas and Hizballah. Both are antisemitic, Islamist genocidal terrorist organisations sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, and which have persistently targeted Jewish people in Israel and around the world, murdering them in their hundreds.
In a meeting in Parliament in 2009, Jeremy Corbyn made the following remarks: “I want to first of all say thank you to everyone for being here tonight, and to say that tomorrow evening it will be my pleasure and my honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hizballah will be speaking. I also invited our friends from Hamas to come and speak as well. Unfortunately, the Israelis would not allow them to travel here, so it’s going to be only friends from Hizballah. So far as I’m concerned, that is absolutely the right function of using Parliamentary facilities to invite people from other parts of the world…[applause] so that we can promote that peace, that understanding, and that dialogue. And the idea that an organisation that is dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region should be labelled as a terrorist organisation by the British Government is really a big big historical mistake, and I would invite the Government to reconsider its position on this matter and start talking directly to Hamas and Hizballah.”
That is the fuller context, which Mr Maginn claims has been “stripped” by Mr Corbyn’s critics.
To interpret these quoted remarks as emanating from someone with a neutral position in relation to Hamas and Hizballah, and who was only using “diplomatic” language to be inclusive – language that, incidentally, was not extended to “the Israelis” – is laughable. Mr Corbyn described these murderous, racist, terror groups as organisations that are “dedicated towards…bringing about long-term peace and social justice and political justice”. This is a politician who clearly sounded sympathetic to the aims of these organisations.
Worse still, at the time that Mr Corbyn made his remarks, the British Government (then a Labour Government) had only proscribed what it considered to be the “military wings” of Hamas and Hizballah, and not their so-called “political wings”. Mr Corbyn’s wider point was therefore a criticism of the British Government’s oppositional stance toward the expressly violent elements of these organisations. This is a politician who clearly sounded sympathetic not only to the aims of these organisations, but also to their methods.
In 2015, during the Labour leadership primary, Mr Corbyn was pressed on these past remarks. He explained: “I’m saying that people I talk to, I use it in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hizballah and what they do? No. What it means is that I think to bring about a peace process, you have to talk to people with whom you may profoundly disagree.”
In 2016, when asked by the Home Affairs Committee about the “friends” description, Mr Corbyn said: “It was inclusive language I used which with hindsight I would rather not have used. I regret using those words, of course.”
This was not the only occasion in which Mr Corbyn used “inclusive” language to describe Islamist terrorists. Another was in 2012, when, on a programme on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV, Mr Corbyn described hundreds of Hamas terrorists as “brothers”. Among Mr Corbyn’s “brothers” was Abdul Aziz Umar, who had been given seven life sentences after he helped in the preparation of a suicide vest which was detonated at a restaurant in Jerusalem in 2003. Seven civilians were murdered.
Verdict: Not “false”.
2: Ruth Smeeth/Marc Wadsworth
Claim: Marc Wadsworth used an antisemitic trope to Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth.
At the launch of the Chakrabarti report on antisemitism in April 2016, black rights activist Marc Wadsworth was reported as saying to (then Labour MP) Ruth Smeeth, who is Jewish, ‘Look who’s working hand in hand with the media’.
- Marc Wadsworth had no knowledge Ms Smeeth is Jewish, nor any reason to know it. He merely recognised her as a Labour MP, and saw Ms Smeeth and a Daily Telegraph journalist passing a document between them. There is nothing in his words to suggest antisemitism.
- There simply is no antisemitic trope of ‘working hand in hand with the media’. Of course Jewish people work in and with the media, why shouldn’t they? The trope is control and ownership of the media. So this accusation requires the manufacturing of an entirely new antisemitic trope, and one which is patently ridiculous.
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHv3D7g4RH4
Verdict: False
Analysis
In 2016, with mounting pressure over antisemitism and two internal Labour Party investigations already quashed by the leadership, Jeremy Corbyn appointed the human rights barrister Shami Chakrabarti to lead yet another inquiry, this time not only into anti-Jewish racism, which was the trigger for the investigation, but, controversially, into the broader category of “antisemitism and other forms of racism, including Islamophobia”. Although the inquiry was billed as being independent, on the same day as her appointment, Ms Chakrabarti joined the Labour Party, and explained in her “independent” report that “my inquiry would be conducted, and any recommendations made, in the Party’s best interests.”
In April 2016, the ostensibly independent report was presented by not only Ms Chakrabarti but also, inexplicably, by Mr Corbyn. The presentation took place at a press conference. Present were numerous journalists; MPs, including Ruth Smeeth; and Labour activists, including Marc Wadsworth, to help fill the room. The activists cheered Mr Corbyn and booed the journalists in what became a small political rally instead of the sober introspection that the event had called for.
In his opening remarks launching a report about antisemitism, Mr Corbyn compared Israel to ISIS by saying “our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations.”
Mr Wadsworth, a longtime associate of Mr Corbyn’s who had reportedly been handing out leaflets against “traitors” earlier on, used the event’s question-and-answer segment to accuse Ms Smeeth – a female Labour MP and one of the Party’s best-known Jewish MPs, who is active in its Jewish affiliate and more widely on Jewish affairs – sitting just a few seats away from him, of working “hand in hand” with The Daily Telegraph, which he dubbed the “Torygraph”. Those in the room interpreted his remarks as suggesting that she, a Jew, was treacherously working with Labour’s rivals to undermine Mr Corbyn’s leadership. In the context of the event, the further insinuation was that the concerns about antisemitism that this event was ostensibly meant to address were part of that effort to sabotage Mr Corbyn. Mr Wadsworth was briefly drowned out by cries of “how dare you!”
He then went on to complain that there were too few “African, Caribbean, and Asian people” in the room, implying that the Labour Party’s more immediate problem was not with Jews but with other minorities. One journalist, sitting near Ms Smeeth, commented under his breath: “antisemitism at the launch of an antisemitism report.” Ms Smeeth fled the room in tears. Mr Corbyn, standing at a podium that read “Standing Up Not Standing By”, stood by as Ms Smeeth left the room, and proceeded to answer Mr Wadsworth’s question.
When the event was over, Mr Wadsworth and Mr Corbyn had a good laugh together, with Mr Corbyn telling him that he had sent Mr Wadsworth a text message, and Mr Wadsworth boasting that he had “outed” Ms Smeeth, “bloody talking to the Torygraph!”
Shortly thereafter, Ms Chakrabarti was awarded a peerage, despite Mr Corbyn’s previous pledge not to appoint members to the House of Lords, and she was then appointed to his cabinet.
Mr Wadsworth claimed that he did not know that Ms Smeeth is Jewish. In 2018, he was expelled from the Labour Party in connection with this incident.
Ms Smeeth wrote after the event: “It is beyond belief that someone could come to the launch of a report on antisemitism in the Labour Party and espouse such vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people, which were ironically highlighted as such in Ms Chakrabarti’s report, while the leader of my own party stood by and did absolutely nothing. People like this have no place in our party or our movement and must be opposed.”
In the months following the event, Ms Smeeth experienced some 25,000 incidents of abuse, much of it racial. One of her abusers had authored a 1,000-word document describing how he would murder her. She assumed that it was a far-right individual. It turned out that he was a supporter of Mr Corbyn’s.
Verdict: Not “false”.
1: The Mural.
Image by Donahue Rogers
Claim: Corbyn approved of an antisemitic mural, which shows ‘big-nosed Jewish bankers’ exploiting the masses.
Everyone’s favourite.
- They’re not ‘Jewish bankers’. Five are bankers, only two of whom are Jewish, and the sixth is a bizarre figure from the world of Edwardian English occultism, Aleister Crowley, also not Jewish (he invented his own religion, Thelema). It is quite obviously not a statement about ‘Jews’, as the artist himself has explained, since only two of the ‘big-nosed’ figures are Jewish. The accusation simply makes no sense.
- Neither did Corbyn ‘approve’ of it. He saw a thumbnail of a facebook post about it, and asked why it had been removed. When it was explained to him that some people maintained it was antisemitic, he apologised.
That’s literally the whole thing.
Verdict: False.
Analysis
The mural in question was titled Freedom for Humanity and was created by the American artist Kalen Ockerman, known as Mear One. It was a temporary mural painted on a wall on Hanbury Street in Tower Hamlets in London in 2012. The mural, pictured in full below, depicts older, white-appearing men in suits seated alongside one another playing a Monopoly-like board game resting on the backs of dark-skinned, bald, naked men. Behind the players is the Eye of Providence and scenes of chimneys billowing smoke and images of protest. The players are supposedly dictating the “New World Order”, and the mural plays on notions of freemasonry, the Illuminati and other conspiracy theories, many of which are often bound up with anti-capitalist and anti-establishment antisemitism on both the far-left and the far-right.
The players are claimed to represent actual figures, two of whom are Jewish. The two Jewish figures, Lord Rothschild and Paul Warburg, have exaggerated noses, a classic antisemitic motif. The other figures have alternative exaggerated features.
At the time that the mural was displayed, it provoked negative reactions from local politicians, who sought to have it removed. The Mayor of Tower Hamlets, for example, said: “The images of the bankers perpetuate antisemitic propaganda about conspiratorial Jewish domination of financial and political institutions.”
The artist defended the mural, saying: “I came to paint a mural that depicted the elite banker cartel known as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, the ruling class elite few, the Wizards of Oz. They would be playing a board game of monopoly on the backs of the working class. The symbol of the Freemason Pyramid rises behind this group and behind that is a polluted world of coal burning and nuclear reactors. I was creating this piece to inspire critical thought and spark conversation. A group of conservatives do not like my mural and are playing a race card with me. My mural is about class and privilege. The banker group is made up of Jewish and white Anglos. For some reason they are saying I am antisemitic. This I am most definitely not…What I am against is class.”
He is also reported to have said that “some of the older white Jewish folk in the local community had an issue with me portraying their beloved #Rothschild or #Warburg etc as the demons they are.”
The artist posted on Facebook that there were calls to remove the mural. Jeremy Corbyn commented on the post, which featured a full picture of the mural, asking: “Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.”
In 2018, the mural controversy resurfaced, including Mr Corbyn’s comment. The Jewish then-Labour MP, Luciana Berger, asked his office to explain his historic comment. Mr Corbyn’s office issued a statement: “In 2012, Jeremy was responding to concerns about the removal of public art on grounds of freedom of speech. However, the mural was offensive, used antisemitic imagery, which has no place in our society, and it is right that it was removed.”
This statement is a non-sequitur. Did Mr Corbyn accept at the time that the mural was antisemitic, but believed that it should remain on the grounds of freedom of speech? Or did he not accept that it was antisemitic at the time, but now, as leader, recognised that it was expedient to admit that it was?
Alternatively, perhaps Mr Corbyn never noticed that it was antisemitic. This was the charitable interpretation that many drew, acknowledging that it also meant that he was not able to recognise antisemitic tropes when they appeared on the far-left. This blindness could, at best, be said to characterise Mr Corbyn’s entire approach to Labour’s antisemitism scandal. At worst, in view of his long record of utterances and activity, he is himself an antisemite.
Regarding the mural, Mr Maginn claims that it was not antisemitic, except for where it was. He also claims that Jeremy Corbyn could not have been expected to have seen the mural properly, but that when it was later explained to him, Mr Corbyn agreed that it was right to remove the mural – because it was antisemitic. Yet Mr Maginn still claims, pace Mr Corbyn, that the mural was not in fact antisemitic. In other words, even incidents that Mr Corbyn is prepared to accept are antisemitic, Mr Maginn is not.
Verdict: Not “false”.
#ItWasAScam is a scam
