We have heard from a number of staff who worked in Loto in this period that the operation was unstructured and at times chaotic, with a lack of clear decision-making and reporting lines and, in particular, a reluctance on the part of Jeremy Corbyn himself to make and communicate unequivocal decisions. There was hostility from Labour HQ towards Corbyn’s office, but his operation appeared deeply dysfunctional. Racism in the party is not experienced by individuals solely through acts of aggression or microaggression towards them personally – it is experienced through seeing colleagues being passed over for promotion being the only person from an ethnic minority background around a meeting table being managed by a near-exclusively white senior team and hearing the particular disdain which colleagues reserve for (for example) ethnic minority MPs, councillors and CLP (constituency Labour party) members. There was “overt and underlying racism and sexism” in the abusive WhatsApp messages included in the leaked report, pointing to a deeper problem with racism in the Labour party. We find that both HQ staff and Loto staff wanted the party to win with as many of their favoured MPs in place as possible, which prevented fully objective decision-making the two sides were trying to win in different ways. Loto, meanwhile, sought to support its own favoured MPs. The substance of the quoted messages is concerning – and totally inappropriate from senior staff of a purportedly progressive political party 2017 election campaign clashesĪnti-Corbyn staffers in Labour HQ did not deliberately try to throw the election, as some leftwingers have suggested – but did set up a secret operation, channelling funds to MPs who they wanted to protect. We find that the messages on the SMT WhatsApp reveal deplorably factional and insensitive, and at times discriminatory, attitudes expressed by many of the party’s most senior staff. But the Forde report found that the quoted WhatsApps from a group of senior management overall were not misrepresented or misleading. Abusive WhatsAppsĪ leaked 2020 report, which triggered the Forde inquiry, was a “factional document” that “selectively quoted” some messages. I was advised that the bellringing was conducted by the ‘compliance’ unit and represented the successful suspension or expulsion of a member – often surrounded by the description of such members as ‘trots’. One employee described regular “bellringing” in Labour HQ. Staff described this process as “hunting out thousands of trots”, “trot busting”, “trot spotting”, “trot hunting” and one suggested searching the pro-Corbyn hashtag “#imwithjezza” to see if users had posted abuse.
There was concerning behaviour by senior staff opposed to Corbyn attempting to expel party members. The problem was principally a lack of clarity – on both sides – about how involved Loto (the leader of the opposition’s office) should be and this was aggravated by the mutual antagonism between HQ staff and Loto. But Forde did not find evidence of “systematic attempts” by Corbyn’s team to interfere in disciplinary process. In 2016, there were 5,000 unresolved complaints, almost of third of which related to antisemitism. Labour’s disciplinary systems were “not fit for purpose” and exploited by different factions. Some anti-Corbyn elements of the party seized on antisemitism as a way to attack Jeremy Corbyn, and his supporters saw it simply as an attack on the leader and his faction – with both ‘sides’ thus weaponising the issue and failing to recognise the seriousness of antisemitism, its effect on Jewish communities and on the moral and political standing of the party. Weaponising antisemitismīoth sides used antisemitism as a weapon, with some denying its existence and others using it primarily as a means to attack Corbyn.
The factions ended up in a cycle of attack and counterattack, with each side assuming that the other was acting in bad faith (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not) and responding in kind.
Martin Forde QC paints a depressing picture of two rival camps – based around Corbyn’s office and Labour HQ in London’s Victoria – locked in a bitter struggle for control, which hampered the functioning of the party.
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