Fact-check of some smears used against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters

It is now abundantly clear that, having failed to win the argument on policy, the establishment and the right of Labour have decided that the ground on which they have chosen fight Jeremy Corbyn is that of identity and personality politics. The problem with this is that Jeremy Corbyn is actually generally regarded pretty well as a person, and has a good track record on social as well as economic issues.

However as the Scottish referendum and Bernie Sanders’ primary challenge to Hillary Clinton showed, saturating traditional, new and social media with bombastic lies can be an effective way of counteracting near to impeccable records on issues like gender or race. Another method used against Scottish Nationalists and Bernie Sanders which is being deployed against Jeremy Corbyn is repeated reference to an idea of collective responsibility. Claims are made, whether based in reality or not, about these three groups of supporters and these claims are made in concert with an implied or explicit reference to the ultimate responsibility of Jeremy Corbyn, Alex Salmond or Bernie Sanders. This tactic has become so entrenched now that there are individuals who have actually deployed it against both the Labour Left and Scottish Nationalists. Labour NEC member Johanna Baxter’s evidence-free fallacious claims of ‘Corbynite’ intimidation are a repeat of her 2014 smears against Scottish Nationalists.

A currently fashionable trope referred to by centrist politicians and liberal journalists is the idea of a ‘post-fact’ or ‘post-factual’ politics or voters. This refers almost exclusively to voters who opt for positions or parties which are out of favour with those who favour a socially liberal but also economically neoliberal and technocratic managerial politics. It is applied to Trump and UKIP supporters, but also to anyone who dares to step one inch to the left of the neoliberal consensus. It is deeply ironic then that those who push this trope of ‘post-fact’ politics are currently attempting to topple Jeremy Corbyn with ‘post-factual’ claims. I would contend that UKIP supporters, Scottish Nationalists and the admittedly dreadful ‘The Canary’ are all crudely emulating the behaviour of more traditional media outlets.

With all of this in mind I think it is useful to have a look at some of the smears which have been used against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the media, usually unchallenged ‘above the line’. This list will be by no means exhaustive, the sheer saturation of negative coverage of Jeremy Corbyn means that debunking every smear made against him would be a virtually impossible task, and in any case a handful of examples demonstrates the sort of pattern of behaviour we are dealing with. My intention is simply to address some of the more prominent, and often repeated, claims.

Claim: Jeremy Corbyn [may have] voted ‘Leave’ in the EU Referendum

Reality: False

Several British newspapers uncritically reported the claims of Chris Bryant MP that Jeremy Corbyn voted to Leave the EU. The only basis for this claim is the uncorroborated statement by the MP, not that Corbyn said that he voted to Leave but that he merely refused to answer a question from a hostile MP about the way he had voted on a position on which he had been clear for months. In reality of course Jeremy Corbyn campaigned for Remain and on the day of the vote tweeted that he had voted Remain.

Claim: Labour leader Angela Eagle was subjected to homophobic abuse at constituency meeting by ‘Corbynite’ Labour Party members

Reality: False

Several media outlets including The Guardian, the BBC (on the Daily Politics and Newsnight), the Daily Mail and the Telegraph have reported the claim made by Tessa Jowell that Angela Eagle was subjected to homophobic abuse at a Labour Party constituency meeting in Wallasey. Jowell stated, “She faced homophobic abuse at that meeting.” While not explicitly stated the obvious allusion being made in this claim is that Corbyn supporters were so incensed by Angela Eagle’s leadership bid that they decided to use homophobic verbal abuse.

These claims have varied depending on the retelling, in some versions of the claim Angela Eagle herself is said to have been subjected to the abuse and in others the claim is that the abuse was aimed at her despite her absence from the meeting.

Emma Runswick, the daughter, of the chair of the Labour Party constituency in Wallasey points out both that Angela Eagle was not present and why all of these claims are false in an article in the New Statesman

There is zero tolerance of homophobia in Wallasey CLP. My mother would come down on it like a tonne of bricks. My dad, a branch delegate, would do the same. Kathy Miller, the Secretary and proud mother of a gay man, would do the same. Other Wallasey CLP members are LGBTQ themselves and would do the same. I don’t believe anybody in Wallasey CLP, Corbyn supporters or otherwise, would allow homophobic abuse or gesture to go unchallenged in any meeting.

Others who, unlike Tessa Jowell or Angela Eagle, were present in the meeting corroborate Runswick’s explanation. LGBT news website Pink News reported that

several of those who attended the meeting have refuted the accusation — claiming that Ms Eagle was not even at the meeting in question. Kathy Runswick — Chair of the Wallasey Constituency — told PinkNews that the allegation was “completely untrue”. “Angela Eagle was not at the Wallasey Labour Party AGM and thus could not have ‘faced homophobic abuse’,” she added. “There is zero tolerance of homophobia in Wallasey Labour Party, and the Constituency Labour Party will now fully investigate these new allegations. Ms Runswick also claimed that “when the meeting took place, Angela was still in the Shadow Cabinet, and was apparently fully supportive of Jeremy Corbyn. Kathy Miller — Wallasey CLP Secretary — told PinkNews that the accusations were “extremely upsetting”. “The discussion at the meeting was very supportive of Angela and asked her to continue with that position,” she said. “On a personal basis I was also at the Wallasey CLP AGM meeting, and witnessed no such homophobic behaviour — if I had of witnessed it I would have challenged it immediately. “I’ve been an active campaigner for gay rights all of my life, my son is gay, we as a family have had to deal with homophobic abuse and I find these allegations extremely upsetting.”

Claim: Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters are responsible for brick which smashed window in Angela Eagle’s constituency office

Reality: Perpetrator or perpetrators unknown

Both media and opponents of Jeremy Corbyn were careful not to explicitly (and libellously) claim that Corbyn himself was directly to blame for the brick which smashed a window in Angela Eagle’s constituency office. However, with Angela Eagle leading the charge, a media offensive was launched to very strongly imply a causal link between Corbyn and the smashing of the window. While Jeremy Corbyn condemned the attack several MPs lined up to hold him responsible and his response insufficient. Ben Bradshaw, in possession of no more evidence than anyone else, linked the attack to ‘Momentum supporters’ while Angela Eagle claimed that “He always condemns, he always says it shouldn’t happen, he never actually does anything”.

In reality of course, unless more information emerges, it is impossible to know who is responsible, so who does Eagle expect Corbyn to act against? It certainly could have been a Corbyn supporter acting out of frustration, but equally it is not unrealistic to imagine someone opposed to Corbyn realising the amount of political capital that could be gained from the attack. There is also the possibility that the window could have been put through for reasons totally unrelated to politics. The one thing that we do know is that, until further evidence emerges, we do not know who the responsible party is and it is irresponsible to behave as if we do.

Claim: Intimidation and improper ballot at Brighton and Hove Labour Party meeting

Reality: Competing claims between party hierarchy and constituency membership

As reported in the Guardian on 15/07/2016, ‘Labour has suspended its biggest constituency party and annulled the result of a vote that installed officers supportive of Jeremy Corbyn in key posts.’ and ‘The suspension of Brighton and Hove Labour party happened after accusations of abusive behaviour and an improper ballot at the annual general meeting last week, where leftwingers were elected to a number of offices’.

It is entirely unclear where these claims of intimidation are coming from, they are non-specific and are contested by several Labour Party members who were in attendance at the meeting. The secretary of the Brighton and Hove Labour Party recounted the event as follows,

The subsequent count was conducted by party members who supported different sets of candidates and a variety of individuals. No complaints were made from either side about the integrity of the voting or count. The suggestions that the meeting put members’ safety at risk is absurd. Any allegations of intimidation or poor behaviour are untrue. There is no doubt this draconian and undemocratic intervention by the NEC has been taken because of the overwhelming success of candidates who support Jeremy Corbyn — an outcome that was simply unacceptable to the leadership of the Labour Group on Brighton and Hove City Council and and to the party’s national executive.

Claim: ‘The Corbynites’ are made up of Stalinists, Trotskyites, Anarchists who are‘entryists’ from other parties

Reality: False

Some of the more fantastical claims that have been made about Corbynites are that they are all members of some sort of deviant left-wing sects or are beholden to some kind of ‘beyond the pale’ extremist ideology. These claims are often accompanied by a technique known as ‘nutpicking’ in which RationalWiki defines as

a form of ad hominem mixed with cherry picking and strawmanning. A broader opposite position is presented by picking out a particular weak or nutty representative, hence nutpicking

Here are a few examples

Huffington Post 10/07/2016:

Party staffers have told HuffPostUK that Labour HQ cannot cope with the huge influx of new members to root out those who ought to be ineligible to sign up to the party. The Alliance For Workers Liberty has urged its members to “Flood Into The Labour Party!”, while the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Trade Union and Socialist Coaltion and the Communist Party of Great Britain have all urged their members to mobilise to protect Corbyn’s leadership.

What can we say about these sorts of claims? How can they be evaluated? Well, it might help to look at the number of people who have joined and compare that to the number of people who are organised members of left of Labour political parties.

As of the 8th of July 100,000 extra members had joined the party, on the same date the Guardian provisionally put the figure of total party membership at about 500,000 making the Labour Party the biggest centre-left party in the Western world. Well over half that number has joined since Jeremy Corbyn assumed the Labour leadership.

What about parties to the left of Labour? The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is indisputably the largest left of Labour political party in the country. The Times reports that the SWP claim 6,000 members, a number I suspect is considerably exaggerated even allowing for people whose direct debits for party dues have been forgotten about. Even if we accept these numbers, taken at face value, they would not be a considerable presence in the Labour Party. That is before we consider the fact that by and large members of the SWP are not joining the Labour Party. The creepily authoritarian leadership of the party instructs its members not to.

So if even the most ‘prominent’ left of Labour grouplets is not exerting the influence of their membership on the party then who is? Where is the entryism coming from? Are there Marxist or Anarchist cells consisting of hundreds of thousands in Britain which have been biding their time for decades just waiting for Jeremy Corbyn to lead them to victory through the Labour Party? I find this idea as plausible, if less offensive, as the idea that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who is merely biding his time before announcing the proclamation of an American caliphate.

Claim: Corbyn supporters intimidated NEC member Johanna Baxter

Reality: Mixture of evidence-free claims and proven falsehoods.

On 12/07/2016, the day after the NEC vote on whether Jeremy Corbyn should be included automatically on the ballot in a forthcoming leadership election, NEC member Johanna Baxter gave interviews to both the BBC and Channel 4. During both of these interviews, the first early in the morning and the second late at night, Johanna Baxter appeared to be very shaken and cried while recalling the previous day’s events. The Guardian reported her claims as follows

Jeremy Corbyn tacitly endorsed bullying and intimidation of Labour staff by voting against the proposal for a secret ballot on Wednesday night, an NEC member has said. Johanna Baxter, who is a trade union official and represents constituency parties on Labour’s National Executive Committee, said she had never criticised Corbyn since his election victory and generally avoided speaking to the press but called the NEC meeting “an utter disgrace to our movement”. Focusing on the debate over whether to hold a secret ballot on allowing Corbyn on to the leadership ballot, Baxter said the Labour leader’s supporters opposed allowing a secret ballot, though they were eventually outnumbered by the rest of the committee. “The leader of the Labour party voted against the proposal that we conduct our vote in private in order to protect NEC members who were receiving threats, bullying and intimidation. He voted against it. He endorsed bullying, threats and intimidation, by the fact of that vote. “The only reason to vote against that is so the intimidation can continue. It’s the most shameful act I have ever seen. He showed his true colours in that vote. I have had people tweet and post my personal mobile online, directing people to me, directing their mob at me. “They just say: ‘Oh it’s nothing to do with us, Jeremy can’t be held to account for everyone in the world.’ I’m sorry, but he endorsed it,” she said. … “A prominent journalist was texting members of the NEC, saying they had to vote for Jeremy, a union general secretary was phoning round members of the NEC telling them they had to vote for Jeremy,” she said. “It is intimidation and he endorsed it.”

It is difficult to verify all of these claims, my own view is that Jeremy Corbyn’s desire for an open ballot comes from a belief that the secret ballot is designed to protect constituents from intimidation rather than representatives from accountability. Given the fact that both the secret ballot motion and Corbyn’s automatic inclusion won out I also wonder whether pro-Corbyn members of the NEC were not themselves concerned about intimidation from anti-Corbyn members of the party.

Some of Baxter’s claims however can be weighed up against the evidence. Johanna Baxter specifically requested that Labour Party members lobby her over how she should vote during the NEC vote on multiple websites which featured her e-mail address and phone number. It is difficult to claim that you have been wronged because you have been contacted via telephone or e-mail if you have asked people to do exactly that Baxter makes no specific claims of abuse here, though it is heavily implied. It is entirely possible that she was contacted in an abusive way, and that is totally unacceptable, but the cause of Baxter’s stated grievance is that she was contacted at all.

The one specific claim that we can evaluate is that of the supposed intimidation waged by a ‘prominent journalist’. We now know who that journalist is, it’s Owen Jones, the left-wing journalist who according to Baxter is capable of both calling for Corbyn to resign and intimidating NEC members to vote in the Labour leader’s favour. Even without any further evidence this would be quite a difficult sell to all but the most ardent anti-Corbyn members of the Labour Party.

Unfortunately for Johanna Baxter there is further evidence. In response to the claims made against him Owen Jones revealed the text message that he sent to Baxter, thereby proving both that he had written one of the politest text messages in history and her claims false.

As I hope these examples show, there is a pattern here. Anti-Corbyn forces are claiming that they are being attacked, that they are victims and are weaponising these claims against the Labour leadership. This is the same tactic which was deployed by supporters of Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders and will no doubt be used again and again until it is more commonly understood.