Unions aim to force Corbyn into global definition of anti-Semitism
Labour under pressure as pictures emerge of leader laying wreath near Munich terrorists’ graves
JEREMY CORBYN faces being bounced into accepting the international definition of anti-Semitism by Labour party’s biggest union backers, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
Unite, Unison and the GMB – which donate millions of pounds to the party every year – are understood to have been paying for lawyers to examine the legal definition of anti-Semitism and reassure the party over adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) version.
A stumbling block has been the requirement that Labour party members will in future not be allowed to describe Israel as a “racist endeavour”, if its policies discriminate against Palestinians.
Labour has been dogged by fury over its failure to adopt the IHRA definition, including all 11 examples of anti-Semitism.
Last night, Labour MPs who have criticised the position warned it would not now be enough to defuse tensions and said Mr Corbyn had to go further than merely adopting a form of words.
Yesterday the party was forced on to the back foot again when a photograph emerged of Mr Corbyn in 2014, before he was leader, holding a wreath near the graves of those responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The 2014 visit hit the headlines during last year’s general election campaign, when Labour said Mr Corbyn had been paying his respects at a memorial to those killed by an Israeli air strike on Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) offices in Tunis in 1985.
But the Daily Mail said that its own visit to the Martyrs Ceremony had shown that the memorial was 15 yards from the spot where Mr Corbyn was pictured holding a wreath, in photographs held in the Palestinian Embassy website archive.
The newspaper said that the pictures were taken in front of a plaque honour- ing three men, including the founder of the Black September organisation, which carried out the Munich atrocity, and yards from the grave of PLO intelligence chief Atef Bseiso.
A motion to accept the IHRA definition in its entirety is set to be submitted to a meeting of the disciplinary committee of the Labour party’s ruling National Executive Committee on Sept 4.
The Sunday Telegraph understands that the new definition will not be applied retrospectively, so that its adoption cannot be used to discipline party members for comments made years ago.
One senior party source said: “The big trade unions – Unite, GMB and Unison – will come behind an adoption of it … it will be facilitated on to the agenda. By October everything will be done and dusted and people will wonder what it was all about.”
Aides to Mr Corbyn will want to ensure that if the definition is adopted, it does not look like a dent in the Labour leader’s authority.
Last weekend Mr Corbyn stood by the party’s decision not to accept all 11 examples word for word, writing in The Guardian: “Our code is a good-faith attempt to contextualise those examples and make them legally watertight for use as part of our disciplinary procedures, as well as to draw on additional instances of anti-Semitism.
“Seven of the IHRA examples were incorporated word-for-word. And I believe the essence of the other four have also been captured.”
He added that “actual differences” with the Jewish community were very small, amounting “to half of one example out of 11, touching on free speech in relation to Israel”.
Unions have been frustrated that the party’s attempts to put the Government on the back foot over its “Build it in Britain” campaign this summer have been completely overshadowed by the anti-Semitism row.
Yesterday Paddy Lillis, the general secretary of the shop workers union Usdaw, demanded that Labour “immediately” adopt the full definition, following similar calls from Dave Prentis, the leader of Unison, and Tim Roache, the general secretary of the GMB.
Jon Lansman, the leader of Momentum, together with more moderate Labour MPs such as the deputy leader Tom Watson, are understood to want to adopt the entire definition.
Labour MPs who have been critical of Mr Corbyn’s handling of the row welcomed the news, but warned that Mr Corbyn had to go further than just adopting the definition.
One said that Mr Corbyn’s refusal to adopt the entire definition with examples had “put a focus” on the occasions “when he has met with, defended and supported all sorts of extremists and in some cases terrorists and anti-Semites”.
“This issue is not going to go away until he accepts the full definition ... and kicks out anti-Semites from the Labour party for good.”
The MP added: “This problem predated the Labour Party’s discussions of that definition. Every time he has tried to address it, he has made the problem much, much worse.”
Last week, Glyn Secker, a member of the pro-Corbyn group Jewish Voice for Labour, risked starting another row by reworking Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes to dismiss arguments about anti-Semitism.
Writing in the Morning Star, Mr Secker said: “We know that the wave of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is invisible because, when we ask party branch members – and we have asked very many during this show – if they themselves, personally, have actually seen examples of anti-Semitism within the party, rather than having heard reports of it, or seen it elsewhere in the public domain, the answers are overwhelmingly negative.
“Ah-ah, we hear the cry, it takes a Jew to see the substance. Well, we are several hundred Jews and none has spotted it. But then we are unworthy Jews who do not pass the authenticity test, cast beyond the pale by the magic circle for giving away the game. Andersen is joined by Lewis Carroll.
“So what is the warp and weft of this cloth, what is the pay off and why the tantrums? Just three strands compose the fabric.
“Israel, Zionism and Jew are wove into cloth such that criticism of Israel or Zionism is transmogrified into criticism of Jews and magically becomes anti-Semitic.”
‘It puts a focus on the occasions he has met, defended and supported all sorts of extremists’
Together we stand; divided we fall. It is a mantra repeated for generations across all political parties, yet for the Conservative Party, still bearing the scars of previous in-fighting over Europe, the message is particularly acute as we approach the final stage of Brexit negotiations with the EU.
I joined the Conservative Party in 1996, just in time to witness the futility of members of the same political family prioritising division over our duty to serve the country. When I became an MP in 2010, winning a seat that had been in Labour hands since 1992, I was determined that my focus would be on what mattered locally: better schools and healthcare; sound finances; ensuring working people and families had more of their own money to spend; and bringing under control spiralling welfare bills. Conservative principles that won my seat, without a single mention of Europe. They are the Conservative principles that we must return to if we are to unite our party and win for the future.
Like most places outside major urban areas, my constituency voted to leave by almost 60 per cent. But knocking on doors, just as in 2010, people aren’t obsessing about Brexit in the same way that Westminster does. “We voted two years ago – just get on with it” is the familiar refrain. The 2017 general election provided an important warning: even with the mandate of the referendum result, people want, and deserve, more than platitudes about sunlit uplands. It sounded the alarm bells about the risk of the Conservative Party becoming self-defined as the Brexit party, without a clear domestic policy to offer the country.
Yet as negotiations have continued, we risk becoming ever more consumed by process instead of outcomes. Each day that is spent talking about Brexit is a day that could have been spent setting out our future vision for the NHS, schools, transport, law and order.
Leaving the EU can be a moment of renewal and a catalyst for change, both for the Conservative Party and the country. We need to demonstrate how we can realise the benefits of being an independent sovereign nation, free to diverge on regulations and laws, finally set our own independent taxation and immigration policies, and above all relate this to people’s lives.
This month, the Prime Minister appointed me as chairman of the new Conservative Policy Commission. I am determined that the commission should undertake one of the largest listening and engagement exercises ever conducted by a governing party, with its five taskforces touring the country, taking evidence from party members, communities and organisations across the nation – in particular, those areas that voted to leave the EU in a defiant message of taking back control.
We have witnessed a return to two-party politics: in most constituencies, the combined LabourConservative vote share is around 90 per cent. People know what Labour now stands for: socialism. Corbyn’s answer to every challenge for the future is easily encapsulated: national ownership or more money, paid for by higher taxation. So what is the Conservative alternative?
If the Conservative Party is to win a majority at the next election, we must win back Labour voters. But we cannot enter some kind of Dutch auction with Labour. As the political wing of the British taxpayer, our duty is to be responsible with other people’s money.
Instead, we need to set out our own powerful and authentic 21st-century Conservatism, centred around values that Labour will never now espouse: empowering individual freedom, encouraging individual aspiration and success, and strengthening the essential building blocks of life, family, community and business, far removed from the impersonal grasp of the state. How can we improve people’s use of public services, from maternity services through to hospice care? What reforms can be made to make lives better, strengthen families and communities to prevent social breakdown? Seeking out these moments and experiences, and focusing on equality of opportunity, not merely of outcome, can be a real chance to reunite all wings of the Tory party behind a common mission.
We must recognise the advantages that Brexit can bring, but let us never be defined by it. Millions of people wish to lead their own lives free from the monopoly of state control: it is those people we stand for, and have a duty to fight for, united.