Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour members who support him have been the target of severe criticism over the last week, on the grounds that left-wing members are more prone to antisemitic opinions and behaviour – and that Corbyn has not done enough to prevent the Labour Party from becoming more antisemitic.
But data commissioned by a leading antisemitism charity suggest that this narrative is not only inaccurate but counter-factual.
Antisemitism is vile. It is to be addressed and fought wherever it exists, including in the Labour Party.
Concerns among Jewish communities about antisemitism are absolutely valid and must not be minimised or dismissed.
But some Labour members believe that those valid concerns have also been misused as a political football over the last week.
Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), as its homepage states, “is a volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law.“. It publishes an ‘antisemitism barometer‘ report, based on polling it commissions from YouGov, the polling company with well-reported Tory connections.
That barometer reflects the state of the UK in terms of attitudes to Jews, as well as the attitudes and concerns of our Jewish citizens – and it has featured on social and some mainstream media this week because of a chart showing the prevalence of antisemitic attitudes among this country’s political parties.
CAA’s 2017 barometer showed that 32% of Labour voters agreed, when asked by YouGov, with at least one antisemitic statement:
YouGov conducted a similar poll at the beginning of 2015, but that report does not show the respective states of antisemitic opinion among supporters of political parties.
YouGov’s 2015 and 2017 political party data pages for the CAA ‘Barometer’
However, YouGov did gather the data, which the SKWAWKBOX obtained from YouGov – and they reveal a fact that will surprise many who have followed media coverage of Labour’s ‘antisemitism problem’ under Jeremy Corbyn.
The surveys covered common antisemitic tropes – beliefs or assumptions that stigmatise Jewish people – and a comparison of the two surveys shows that, contrary to the current narrative that Labour’s left-wing members under Jeremy Corbyn have driven the party to a more antisemitic position, the data in fact show the opposite.
Since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, the party and its supporters have become significantly less antisemitic on every metric used in the survey – as the ‘net’ data summary shows:
The individual results carry even more impact – remember, these are net results of Labour supporters’ agreement with the statements, so the bigger the negative bar, the less antisemitic a result it represents:
![Trope 1[2]](https://i0.wp.com/skwawkbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Trope-12-1.png?resize=780%2C549&ssl=1)
Of course, these data do not mean that there is no antisemitism in the Labour Party. Far from it – and any level is too high. Those who call for Labour to improve are perfectly right to do so and Labour’s new General Secretary has the issue at the top of her agenda when she takes over the post next week.
But where the call has become an accusation against Jeremy Corbyn that the party has become more antisemitic under his leadership – that accusation is objectively false and the media narrative around it misleading.
Labour’s membership has also roughly tripled since the 2015 leadership contest – with the party moving significantly to the left as left-leaning members joined in huge numbers. That influx of left-wing views correlates with the significant fall in antisemitic views among the party’s members and voters.
The Labour leader has a lifelong record of fighting against all forms of bigotry. In just two years of his leadership antisemitism in the Labour Party has fallen, as the mostly-left membership has soared.
Data commissioned and accepted by a leading Jewish charity campaigning against antisemitism, from surveys by a Tory-led polling company, demonstrate that far from becoming more antisemitic, Corbyn’s Labour rejects antisemitism at significantly greater levels it did under his predecessor Ed Miliband.
YouGov’s full datasets: 2015 and 2017.
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Its about time someone highlighted the findings of this Research. It seems the MSM are totally not interested in actual, validated Research, preferring to rely on questionable sources for their smears. Further, unless all Parties are treated to the same mass hysteria, the subject remains biased and politicised, which is a disgrace.
The figures are welcome but the CAA is anything but what it says on the tin: it was formed in 2014 as a response to the bad PR Israel was getting as it bombed the shit out of Gaza, killing numerous civilians including many children in the process. Enter the CAA to deflect attention from Israeli crimes by falsely claiming that antisemitism was a rapidly growing problem in Britain. So much so that last year a public spat erupted between CAA boss Gideon Falter and Simon Johnson, CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council (not a leftist organisation!) during which Johnson made a video telling Falter: “It is beholden on organisations to never sensationalise antisemitism,” something he held that CAA had been doing. If further proof were needed about CAA’s real intentions, its archives contain 2 documents attacking the EDL/NF, 22 attacking the late Gerald Kaufman, 32 attacking Lady Shami Chakrabati and 77 attacking the current leader of the Labour Party, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn.
The raw data on p33 of the 2017 report shows only 59% of Tories approving no antisemitic comments, not 60 as in their bar chart. Almost as if the CAA tweaked it to make the Tories look better. Of course then ran to the press with a headline saying the eaxt opposite of what this data showed.
It is also an indicationof the gap between the old membership and new pro-corbyn comers.
Skwawkbox, help, this is all so demoralising for many members.
What doesn’t help is the Leaders Office deciding to swallow the confection of AS is a big problem. To be clear, the blindingly obvious stance is that, yes, AS can be found across all sections of society (although, coming from a rural setting a long way from The Metropolis you’d struggle to find the merest hint of any AS) and that the issue is being hyped up by the usual suspects and that the MSM are relieved to have found a viable stick to beat JC with – John Mann calling for CS to be suspended on BBC World at 1 being a prime example.
Across the left it’s not difficult to find outrage at the harm this is doing (e.g. Labour Briefing website). The Leaders Office clearly doesn’t feel it’s politically expedient to fight back (maybe understandable – it gives the story more oxygen) but how can we, the members, instigate a push back on the nonsense?
Is this a moment where the membership has a new role to play in our new media landscape? How can Skwawkbox be part of organising a member-led revolt against the wreckers? I don’t know the answers, I wish I did.
We could share this article http://jewdas.org/enough-is-enough/
To quote: ‘What has happened over the last week is anything but an attempt to address antisemitism. It is the work of cynical manipulations by people whose express loyalty is to the Conservative Party and the right wing of the Labour Party. It is a malicious ploy to remove the leader of the Opposition and put a stop to the possibility of a socialist government. The Board of Deputies, the (disgraced for corruption) Jewish Leadership Council and the (unelected, undemocratic) Jewish Labour Movement are playing a dangerous game with people’s lives.’
The thing is of course that the Tory papers and the rest of the anti-Corbyn media have been giving (the mostly false) cases and allegations of anti-semitism reams and reams of coverage during the past nearly three years, and have done so deliberately so as to give the impression to much of the general public that there IS a big problem of anti-semitism (just like they did exactly the opposite regarding JC’s campaigning during the EU referendum, so that his “lacklustre” campaign could then initiate a leadership challenge).
Anyway, the whole thing has of course been orchestrated and manufactured from the outset, and the irony of it is that those behind it, and those playing/acting their parts/rolls, are far, far worse than any (non-violent) racist or anti-semite. They are psychopaths who will do anything to maintain the status quo, and regard the many as little more than ants, to be used and exploited and manipulated, and it is an endless source of amusement to them that majority of people are completely oblivious to what they do and what they are, and how they – the so-called elite and their minions – control what they think and believe through their propaganda machine the MSM, and especially the vile and rabid right-wing press:
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-lobby-manufactured-uk-labour-partys-anti-semitism-crisis/16481
Agreed Alan. But we are losing this battle. The opposition recognise that this is a winning formula. Now they have achieved gains they will dig and dig until they destroy the movement and the party. They will not stop. We must find a way to neutralise this attack. But I do have faith in our team and I believe their current position is a holding strategy. Others may have to fall on their swords until a solution is found.
Anti-Semitism will always be with us no matter what we do because there will always be racist people but we still have to do as much as we can to keep it out of society and the Labour Party.
However, Jeremy Corbyn can NEVER do enough to combat anti-Semitism because A.S. isn’t the target for the Zionists, HE is and as such they will not be satisfied until they destroy him.
For this reason, Zionism cannot be defeated just from within the Labour Party, it is too powerful. Public opinion has to be turned against Zionism by highlighting it for the evil it is.
How do we do it? First we have to accept that the problem is Zionism and tackle it head on, not cow tow to it and pretend it will go away if we pacify it – it wont.Then we must accept and encourage the help of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who deplore Zionism, they are the ones who actually suffer most from Zionism which tries to conflate itself with Judaism.
From Einstein onwards, non-Zionist Jews have fought against Zionism but they have received far too little help from the wider community. We must join forces with them and fight Zionism together. By doing that, we will be able to get public opinion on our side and at the same time help the Palestinians.
Talking of Albert Einstein, I just happened to come across the following yesterday:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Albert%20Einstein%201948%20Letter%20New%20York%20Times%20Nakba.htm
A great contribution Allan and another coincidence in the text:-
Mattityahu “Matti” Peled was the father of Miko Peled a personal friend who was over here recently givng a series of talks on the suppression of the Palestinians by the brutal Israelis. Try and get hold of his book ‘The General’s Son’ – the general being Matti Peled, it dispells all of the Zionist myths.
If a drop in antisemetic thinking can be achieved with no political education in place then just think what could have been achieved had the recommendations of the Chakrabarti inquiry, which included education, been enacted.
Why haven’t NEC members been demanding the inquiries recommendations which they approved 18 months ago were implemented?
BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show. 34mins 53secs in. Feature on a (Jewish) Labour Party member’s experience of the complaints procedure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09x5jsj/victoria-derbyshire-28032018
How bizarre. But they look like posts and process from before Corbyn was leader?
The CAA are a registered charity. What they are doing is blatantly political and in no way can this be justified as charitable work. They are currently crowdfunding on facebook to pay for banners etc to use for a demonstration they are planning on 8th April against Corbyn. How is campaigning to remove the leader of a political party charitable?
We need to complain en masse to the Charity Commission. Or at the very least, sign the petition to have them deregistered. https://www.change.org/p/the-charity-commission-to-get-the-charity-commission-to-deregister-the-zionist-campaign-against-anti-semitism