AtariLegend

Sunday 12 April 2020 10:15, UK

An extensive internal investigation into the way Labour handled antisemitism complaints will not be submitted to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, after an intervention by party lawyers.

The 860-page report, seen by Sky News, concluded factional hostility towards Jeremy Corbyn amongst former senior officials contributed to "a litany of mistakes" that hindered the effective handling of the issue.

The investigation, which was completed in the last month of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, claims to have found "no evidence" of antisemitism complaints being treated differently to other forms of complaint, or of current or former staff being "motivated by antisemitic intent".

Instead, the report concludes there was a lack of "robust processes, systems, training, education and effective line management" and found "abundant evidence of a hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in Party HQ" towards Mr Corbyn which "affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints".

As well as 10,000 separate emails, the dossier uncovers thousands of private WhatsApp communications between former senior party officials and singles out for criticism some who gave whistleblower evidence to last year's highly-critical BBC Panorama investigation on antisemitism within Labour.

These include the former General Secretary Lord McNicol and the former acting head of the governance and legal unit, Sam Matthews.

Those involved in compiling the huge dossier insist it was intended to provide additional context to the equalities watchdog and supplement the party's main submissions to the investigation into institutional antisemitic racism.

Indeed the report directly addresses the EHRC on several occasions, including urging the watchdog to "question the validity of the personal testimonies" of former members of staff and to "focus instead on the documentary, primary-source evidence that the Party has made available", leaving little doubt as to the intention of its authors that the document be submitted to the investigation.

However, Sky News understands party lawyers have told General Secretary Jennie Formby the report entitled: "The work of the Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 - 2019", should not be submitted to the Commission, due to fears it could damage the party's wider case.

A Labour Party spokesperson disputed the suggestion the report was ever intended to be submitted to the EHRC, saying:"The Party has submitted extensive information to the EHRC and responded to questions and requests for further information, none of which included this document."

It is understood party lawyers consider the document to be a draft internal report covering a time period and breadth of issues that are not within the scope of the watchdog's investigation, and that it should be used to inform and enhance the party's understanding of the situation.

But that decision has prompted widespread concern amongst those who worked in the most senior positions in the leadership office of Jeremy Corbyn, with one telling Sky News: "This report completely blows open everything that went on".

"We were being sabotaged and set up left right and centre by McNicol's team and we didn't even know. It's so important that the truth comes out", the source added.

The report claims private communications show senior former staff "openly worked against the aims and objectives of the leadership of the Party, and in the 2017 general election some key staff even appeared to work against the Party's core objective of winning elections".

The report says the WhatsApp communications in question, which included some of the most senior figures in the party headquarters and Lord McNicol's office, were leaked by one of the group's members.

The examples from chat archives published in the document include:

• Conversations in 2017 which appear to show senior staff preparing for Tom Watson to become interim leader in anticipation of Mr Corbyn losing the election
• Conversations which it is claimed show senior staff hid information from the leader's office about digital spending and contact details for MPs and candidates during the election
• Conversations on election night in which the members of the group talk about the need to hide their disappointment that Mr Corbyn had done better than expected and would be unlikely to resign
• A discussion about whether the grassroots activist network Momentum could be "proscribed" for being a "party within a party"
• A discussion about "unsuspending" a former Labour MP who was critical of Mr Corbyn so they could stand as a candidate in the 2017 election
• A discussion about how to prevent Corbyn ally Rebecca Long-Bailey gaining a seat on the party's governing body in 2017
• Regular references to corbyn-supporting party staff as "trots"
• Conversations between senior staff in Lord McNicol's office in which they refer to former director of communications Seamus Milne as "dracula", and saying he was "spiteful and evil and we should make sure he is never allowed in our Party if it's last thing we do"
• Conversations in which the same group refers to Mr Corbyn's former chief of staff Karie Murphy as "medusa", a "crazy woman" and a "bitch face cow" that would "make a good dartboard"
• A discussion in which one of the group members expresses their "hope" that a young pro-Corbyn Labour activist, who they acknowledge had mental health problems, "dies in a fire"

The investigation also accuses the former General Secretary Lord McNicol, and other senior figures of providing "false and misleading information" to Jeremy Corbyn's office in relation to the handling of antisemitism complaints, which the report claims meant "the scale of the problem was not appreciated" by the leadership.

The report claims McNicol and staff in the Governance and Legal Unit "provided timetables for the resolution of cases that were never met; falsely claimed to have processed all antisemitism complaints; falsely claimed that most complaints received were not about Labour members and provided highly inaccurate statistics of antisemitism complaints".

Responding to the messages cited and the allegations made against him in the report, Lord McNicol said:"The energy and effort that must have been invested in trawling 10,000 emails rather than challenging antisemitism in the party is deeply troubling.

"This a petty attempt to divert attention away from the real issue. It is telling that the Party's own lawyers appear to have ruled that this information was unsuitable for submission to the EHRC's ongoing investigation.

"I have repeatedly stood by the professional staff of the Labour Party who I worked with over the seven and a half year period I was General Secretary, and continue to do so."

The report also claims Sam Matthews, who served first as Head of Disputes and then as acting Head of the Governance and Legal Unit, "rarely replied or took any action, and the vast majority of times where action did occur, it was prompted by other Labour staff directly chasing this themselves".

It states that there was a failure to develop "detailed or coherent guidelines for investigating complaints based on social media conduct" and a failure to "implement the Macpherson principle of logging and investigating complaints of racism as racism".

Following what the report describes as a "systematic review" of all complaints received between November 2016 to February 2018, it claims investigations were initiated into only 34 of the more than 300 complaints received in relation to antisemitism.

"At least half of these warranted action, many of them in relation to very extreme forms of antisemitism, but were ignored. Almost all of these complaints were forwarded from one inbox to another, and many of them were identified as Labour members and sent to the Head of Disputes, Sam Matthews, for action", the report claims.

In a statement to Sky News responding to the leaked report, Sam Matthews said: "This latest episode comes as no surprise to me, as an effort by a disgruntled faction who are floundering in their attempts to blame others in order to distract from matters that will be investigated by the EHRC and the Courts.

"I hope Keir Starmer will stand by his commitment to undo the damage that they and their supporters have caused.

Mr Matthews continued: "The proper examination of the full evidence will show that as Head of Disputes and Acting Director, I did my level best to tackle the poison of anti-Jewish racism which was growing under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

"A highly selective, retrospective review of the Party's poor record, not deemed good enough for submission by the Party's own lawyers and conducted in the dying days of a Corbyn's leadership in order to justify their inaction, simply cannot be relied upon."