JVL’s Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi apologises to journalist John Ware in open court
Following a libel case brought by journalist John Ware, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, the Media Officer and one of the founders of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), the antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation, has apologised in open court.
The libel action concerned comments made by Ms Wimborne-Idrissi on Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show, in which she claimed that Mr Ware had a “terrible record of Islamophobia, far-right politics” and that the BBC had in the past had to “apologise” for his journalism and discipline him.
The claims were then repeated on the JVL website, and JVL’s Web Officer, Richard Kuper, was also a defendant. Mr Kuper is the founder of Pluto Press, which was previously the publishing arm of the International Socialists, now known as the Socialist Workers Party. Mr Ware denied the claims made by Ms Wimborne-Idrissi.
Mr Ware was the maker of the BBC Panorama documentary “Is Labour Antisemitic”. The programme, which was televised in July 2019, showed former Labour Party employees speaking out publicly to reveal Jeremy Corbyn’s personal meddling in disciplinary cases relating to antisemitism. The programme explained how senior Labour Party staffers, some of whom Campaign Against Antisemitism has known for years, used to run Labour’s disciplinary process independently, but soon after Mr Corbyn’s election as Party leader found themselves contending with his most senior aides, who were brazen in their efforts to subvert due process. During the programme, Labour’s press team made claims that the staffers featured had political axes to grind and lacked credibility, and the whistleblowers and Mr Ware commenced libel proceedings against the Labour Party.
At a preliminary hearing to determine the ordinary meaning of Ms Wimborne-Idrissi’s words, she argued that they were just “honest opinion.” However, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled that reasonable listeners would have understood the comments as statements of fact, namely that Mr Ware had “engaged in Islamophobia and extreme, far-right politics, as a consequence of which the BBC has had to apologise for his conduct,” and that there were “reasonable grounds to suspect” that Mr Ware had “an extensive record of Islamophobia and of involvement in extreme, far-right politics.”
Mr Ware observed that he had never been disciplined on any matter by the BBC, had no “record of Islamophobia” and had never promoted “extreme far-right politics”.
Following this ruling, Ms Wimborne-Idrissi had to prove that these assertions of fact were true, which is a higher threshold than showing that they were mere honest opinions.
JVL subsequently wrote a tweet saying that they have a “large bill to pay”. It was reported that the group faces “financial collapse” due to the proceedings.
In her apology to Mr Ware, Ms Wimborne-Idrissi said: “I accept the Court’s judgment that my comments about John Ware in a live radio programme on the Jeremy Vine show were defamatory. I should not have asserted that the BBC had taken action against Mr Ware in connection with allegations he has engaged in Islamophobia and extreme far-right and/or racist politics. Nor that this was in any way reflected in his journalistic work.
“I now accept these allegations to be untrue. JVL and I have apologised unreservedly to Mr Ware and explained that I spoke in the way that I did because I was so angry at the content of the “Is Labour Antisemitic programme” for which Mr Ware was the reporter.”
In his recent report, Martin Forde QC ludicrously suggested that JVL should have a role in antisemitism education in the Labour Party, of which JVL is still, outrageously, considered a legitimate faction.
Ms Wimborne-Idrissi was recently elected to Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee but was shortly thereafter suspended by the Party for the second time.
The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
