Updated 7th March 23.10

A JVL Statement

7th March 2018

In an extraordinary development, JVL Secretary Glyn Secker, longtime Jewish activist, Executive Committee member and Director of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and captain of the Jewish Boat to Gaza in 2010, has been suspended from membership of the Labour Party.

Here are the charges: “Allegations that you may have been involved in a breach of Labour Party rules have been brought to the attention of national officers of the Party. These allegations relate to comments made on social media that may be in (sic) anti Semitic and therefore in breach of Labour Party rules.” They can’t even get the grammar right!

No accuser is known, the charge is appallingly vague, no evidence produced. But so seriously does the Head of Disputes, Sam Mathews, take the matter that Glyn cannot attend any party meeting including Annual Conference (that’s in September, six months away – Mathews clearly doesn’t think this will be resolved in a hurry!). And he has the gall to say: “In view of the urgency to protect the Party’s reputation in the present situation…”

Nothing is doing more to bring the Party into disrepute than the shocking use of unsubstantiated allegations to punish active members of the left without knowledge of charges, on the merest say-so of those who oppose their political stance, and in defiance of the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report which was adopted a year-and-a-half ago by the NEC – but on which no action has been taken towards its effective implementation.

This is an absurd, politically-motivated attack on our Secretary and our organisation. We call on our supporters to move motions of censure in their branches and CLPs. To use allegations of antisemitism in this way is an abuse of power, and a degrading of the seriousness of actual antisemitism and other forms of racism. While antisemitism is monstrous – and, like all forms of racism, should be vigorously dealt with – false accusations of antisemitism are monstrous too. We call for the immediate lifting of these charges.