Those of you who are on social media or who have been following the news would have heard the line that only 0.3% of Labour members have been investigated, or suspected of being antisemitic.
Channel 4 Factcheck has done an excellent job of killing this nonsense by pointing out two things:
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- “It’s hard to understand how Mr Corbyn can claim to know how many Labour members were investigated by the party for antisemitism throughout his leadership. This is because people close to him have always argued that Labour did not have proper systems in place to track antisemitism cases until they took over the management of the party.”
- “FactCheck approached Labour last year to ask how Mr Corbyn was able to recite such statistics then if, according to Ms Formby’s later statement, there was no “consistent and comprehensive system” in place for recording antisemitism complaints until she took over a month later. Those representing Labour at the time denied that there was any inconsistency between Mr Corbyn and Ms Formby’s statements, though they were unable to provide a full explanation of how the two might be reconciled.”
It appears that the statistic comes from a survey commissioned by Professor Greg Philo whose book downplayed (to put it mildly) antisemitism in the Labour Party. It was co-authored by Professor David Miller of Bristol University, whose comments on antisemitism have been well documented on this blog. Miller was suspended from the Labour Party twice. He has since quit the party in a huff using language that the Community Security Trust, an organisation that documents antisemitism, claimed was “disgraceful and dangerous”.
Miller also said “The Zionist movement and the Israeli govt are the enemy of the left, the enemy of world peace and they must be directly targeted”. He also called the British Government “the enemy”. This language is disgraceful and dangerous.
— CST (@CST_UK) July 30, 2020
