- Hate crimes are a matter for police and investigation is welcome and those found guilty should face the consequences
- 45 cases handed over by LBC – ‘some’ are being investigated
- Offences relate to online activity – Met has not confirmed Labour members involved
- Met Police Commissioner: “we will not be investigating the Labour Party
Sky News, the BBC and other media outlets have begun reporting that the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is investigating hate crimes ‘within the Labour Party’. As so often, this is a misrepresentation – a fact confirmed by none other than the Met Commissioner herself.
Cressida Dick appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to talk, among other things, about the issue – and she was emphatic that the investigation is not and will not be into the Labour Party:
Commissioner Dick was handed a ‘dossier’ by radio station LBC after an interview with the station some weeks ago, which was said to contain forty-five examples of online hate-speech, allegedly by Labour members. Of these, only a subset have been found worthy of further investigation – and the Met is not confirming that these involve Labour members.
A Met spokesperson told the SKWAWKBOX:
On Tuesday 4 September, the Met Commissioner was handed a folder of paperwork following a radio interview with LBC Radio in Leicester Square. The complainant alleged that the documentation included evidence of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
The contents have been examined by specialist officers.
A criminal investigation has commenced into some of the allegations within the documentation.
Early investigative advice is being sought from the Crown Prosecution Service.
The MPS will not comment further on the details of our investigation.
Ms Dick also told Radio 4 that hate speech laws set a ‘high bar’ and that merely being offensive was not enough to trigger prosecution.
In spite of the Commissioner’s clear statement regarding the Labour Party, a BBC announcer just minutes later stated that the Met is investigating the party.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
If the content of some of the online messages posts is what some have been reporting, it is vile and the police should throw the book at the people involved. But as Cressida Dick made clear, the MPS is investigating a number of individuals who may or may not be Labour members – not the Labour Party.
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In July I published a study of MuralGate that alleged a conspiracy; here I analyse the data on those who viewed the essay. It shows how a dozen or so around the world (and two in particular) took my investigation very seriously, tried to limit its influence, but inadvertently widened its scope insofar as the reception of MuralGaga led to further discoveries. Please share.
https://www.academia.edu/37690505/GagaPhooey_Understanding_the_Reception_of_MuralGaga
How many radio interviews has Cressida Dick done since she became Met Commisioner?
The following article was posted on the CAA website on September 4th, and finishes by (falsely) accusing the Labour Party of covering up cases of anti-semitism:
https://antisemitism.uk/police-investigating-secret-labour-party-hate-dossier-after-caa-chairman-reports-hate-crime-to-cressida-dick-live-on-lbc/
Funny how the chairman of the CAA waited until Cressida Dick was doing a radio interview before bringing it to the attention of the police. As for the so-called dossier being “secret”, are they in fact just referring to a list of cases of alleged A/S that hadn’t been dealt with yet by the NEC.
PS Cases which are of course confidential – ie dealt with confidentially – as the CAA chairman knows full well.
Just came across the following article on the BBC News website about the ‘dossier’, which just happens to say the following, but mentions it in passing AND as if it is completely divorced from the main thrust of the article itself and is NOT related to it as such:
The party is currently working through a backlog of cases of alleged anti-Semitism complaints against members.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46070229
The article first refers to it as an ‘internal Labour document’, and then later on in the article refers to it as a ‘dossier’.
Afterthought: This LP internal document was passed on to the police two months ago now, and was described at the time in the media as a “secret dossier”, but it would appear that at no point have the police contacted the LP to ascertain precisely what it is, which one would have thought would be the first thing they’d do. The point being that if it WAS just a list of cases waiting to be dealt with – ie in line to be dealt with – then why isn’t anyone saying so.
And one would have thought that it would be an obvious thing for any journalist – as opposed to a propagandist – to do when preparing their article on the matter – ie contact the LP to ascertain what the document is exactly. But if you were a propagandist AND already knew that it was in fact just a list of cases waiting to be heard and dealt with, then you would have no reason to contact the LP and ask them, because your agenda is to smear the LP, and Jeremy Corbyn in particular. But if it IS just a list of cases that are/were waiting to be dealt with, then why on Earth hasn’t the LP – or more specifically the NEC – put out a press release to THAT effect.
And isn’t it a strange coincidence how just three to four months ago, a number of people – myself included – were pointing out how practically none – if any – of all these alleged cases of A/S during the past three years ever seem to get reported to, and investigated by the police. And then, just a few weeks later at the beginning of September, suddenly a long list of cases is passed on to – reported to, in effect – the police.
Conspiracy? Perish the thought!
As Bob Dylan said….”Now is the time for your tears”. The complicit action of a Murdoch Media Organisation in conjunction with the BBC & then Met.Police demonstrates the same lesson that the Hillsborough Inquiry taught us; that we do not have an independent Media; nor Police; nor Judiciary. LBC forwarded leaked papers to Cressida Dick on 4th September, which is today’s BBC headline news? The old chums network. Is the Labour Party ahead in the polls again?
Probably more likely is the Govt of Israel about to launch an attack on Palestine
Like
Actually Steve, you said that (like)
LBC do not have a single programme host who is anything other than hostile to Corbyn. Many are derisory. So in September someone representing “the Labour Party” gives LBC a folder. Well, there are many of those likely candidates. Any of the twenty who voted in the latest show of dissension for instance. And many more including staff from McNicol through to Watson. Like the cringing discussion on Politics Live yesterday where Watson had to “defend” Corbyn and McConnell against Lisa Nandy’s quoted crtiticism. Watson with slightly bashful sparkling eyes speaking of “pragmatism” with a little smile, how Labour couldn’t go into an election raising the tax on the middle class; nothing about the changes bound up with those protecting lower bands. The whole pantomime disgusting, obvious amongs the five in the studio that of course Watson in fact backed Nandy, though he must make a valiant effort not to seem so. This is the sort of stuff that is day in day out, as much attack from within as without. Then we had an item about Tom in the gymn losing weight. Watson is a BBC goodie, you understand. Just like Lisa Nandy of course.
The Corbyn anti-semitic orchestrated trope is what is seen as the runner. Umana must keep repeating that it is “institutional” in the party as only by that can McPherson’s application be accepted and deployed as a real weapon, that a person can be deemed at fault if the person they have made the remark to sees it as such. So the Labour Party must be shown to be “institutionally racist” the way that McPherson said allowance must be made for the then contemporary institutional racism in the Met. The LBC gambit is a follow on again, from that. There are PR companies involved here it should be remembered. The campaign is not a series of unfortunate isolated incidents.
I should have written “the labour Party must be shown to be institutionally anti-semitic” in last para. though the parallel I am drawing with McPherson should be obvious. The campaign just now is about getting enough folk to think it is anyway.
Take a look at the unchallenged nonsense from Baroness Neuberger and Chukka on last night’s ITV Peston. Watch it from 39mins 30 seconds on-wards
https://www.itv.com/hub/peston/2a4458a0077
Listen carefully to what the Baroness actually says rather than the overall impression she seeks to create. Chukka’s contribution directly contradicts the Home Affairs Select Committee report that he co-authored.
The BBC and others are not happy with just filtering the news they present to us, they now see it as their job to manipulate it.
I welcome the involvement of the police in investigating anti-Semitism wherever it occurs. If there are any proven antisemites in the LP they should be removed. We must not however use the bogus IHRA definition to judge whether someone is antisemitic by conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
If what we hear in the media is correct and there are alleged cases of anti-Semitism in the LP which haven’t been investigated, why not? It is an important point and raises the question of the motives of whoever leaked the information. We know for a fact that there are Zionist Labour MPs are out to damage Jeremy Corbyn. Are there also Zionists within the LP machinery who have the same motives and have ignored antisemites so they could do maximum damage to further the Zionist cause?
It is noticeable that many of those already suspended are Jews who do not subscribe to Zionist views on Israel. No time was lost in taking action against them, why? It’s because Jews within the camp have a greater capacity to defeat the Zionist’s aims of destroying Corbyn’s prospects of becoming PM.
Chuka Umunna said the LP is institutionally antisemitic even though he had previously said in twenty years he had not experienced any anti-Semitism. It seems to me therefore that as a result of Blair’s tenure, it is more likely that the LP is institutionally Zionist!
We’ll be lucky to see a single prosecution out of this, and it’s not the Met’s business which political party any alleged defendant belongs to. Though it would be wonderful if a person they prosecuted turned out to be a Tory trolling.
All accusations of hate crime should of course be investigated – but the public profiles of the accusers must at the same time be investigated for possible political motivation.
Of 45 accusations probably fewer than a handful will be prosecuted – anyone found guilty of offences should of course receive whatever sentence the court deems appropriate.
Then we’ll see how much prominence the MSM gives to the accusations that don’t result in prosecution and any false accusations made for political advantage.
………but I still don’t know what antisemitism is? Is a hate crime now defined by the IHRA definition? Which definition is Cressida Dick using? Which definition was LBC using? Which definition does the BBC use?
No, to the best of my knowledge the definitions/examples don’t carry the force of law.
This investigation could be a good thing if the judges concerned define the law as it stands while explaining why prosecutions failed CPS tests of viability, proceeded to trial, were quashed at trial or resulted in guilty verdicts.
The judiciary will then, I hope, feel duty bound to dissect the IHRA definitions from a legal perspective for the public and point out their utter inadequacy.
………if the judges concerned are independent & autonomous. Do you really trust the judiciary?
Trust?
No, of course not, hence the words ‘if’ and ‘hope’.
I would say though that the likelihood of chicanery by Tories and MSM is higher than that of the judiciary allowing their own inborn partiality to influence their judgements.
Despite judges being establishment figures, and therefore inherently untrustworthy, they’ve frustrated governments’ plans on a number of occasions.
Don’t make me look them up…
I think there’s an excellent chance they’ll take the opportunity to reject the IHRA completely – if the CPS isn’t first “persuaded” by a Tory lawyer MP to reject all 45 to avoid the lid being blown off their little game.
The judiciary rarely make public pronouncements on such issues until a case is actually presented and decided – to my memory anyway.
Would it not be possible for someone media savvy to compile an equivalent dossier for people connected to the Conservatives for police consideration. Ultimately if Labour members have committed hate crimes it will be good to be rid of the them,but let’s have a look at both sides of the coin. Just heard Watsons contribution,what an odious,disingenuous nause.
Being a bit cynical, but isn’t it convenient that this has come out a few days after the massacre in a synagogue in the US. Bringing this up on the day of the racist murders would be too obvious, but a few days gives it some room and more impact.
It just seems a bit convenient that this dossier, held since September, comes out now. Quite distasteful but not too surprising when you consider the usual suspects and their connections…
Louise Ellman, asked on BBC just now whether Corbyn would have seen the dossier, said “I don’t know how the mechanics of the Labour Party work” – yeah, right.
LBC have been peddling this news every 15 minutes all day today repeating it 3 tlmes each bulletin. The MET are going to launch an investigation into a few potential labour Members I have been hearing. This is LBC major breaking news item. Pathetic. Nick Ferrari started this when interviewing Dick live on LBC.
At the same time, the Guardian app notified me about this this morning, but a look at the app recently and I couldn’t see anything about it.
It’s the lead story in the “UK Politics” section of The Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/02/theresa-may-arron-banks-leave-eu-campaign-investigation
Ooops – My apologies, posted to wrong article
Yes and where is the evidence that the 45 on-line potential perpetrators are Labour members?
My impression was that the leak came from the NCC – if so wouldn’t that imply Labour membership?
Considering what the Skawkbox has already unearthed on the far-right Twitter trolls, you have to wonder who’s behind this latest leak. If there are any members who are antisimitic they should be thrown out! I was listening to Radio 5 this morning when they announced with much glee about this, I wonder if they’ve retracted or apologised for their “error” in once again smearing the Labour Party?
And after we have witnessed the horrendus and heartbreaking attack on the synagogue in the US perhaps those who attack Labour don’t see the REAL danger?
My trade union branch had a great discussion on this today and I argued Labour etc and trades unions need to set the agenda instead of being reactive plus in every country we need to build solidarity between diverse working people and we need to engage with our opponents and split the soft from the hard core bigots.
The saddest comment I read from the election of Bolisanaro the Barbarian in Brazil was a working class man saying “now they will put more in health and education” but dream on as they privatise, bring in extreme Neo-Liberalism and give tax cuts to the rich but it is sad that some people who may have nothing self actualise in someone else’s success (like Trump the Barbarian who despite being left £200m went bankrupt 8 times but perhaps his fortune is built on a house of cards & he was bailed out last time by a US billionaire- upper class charity or the upper class welfare state – believe me Trump the Turd is due for the greatest come uppance!)
The Internet has helped the Left to organise but has also connected up previously isolated bigots who reinforce each others political ignorance – they tend to be insular and may have made no effort to mix and we also need to remember the Right via social media are reinforcing prejudice and ignorance and fear of the Other ie via the likes in social media in the past of Cambridge Analytica – if you make an ignorant comment you automatically get a message reinforcing this so we need to fight on social media too!
But Far Right US Billionaire Barbarians are pouring millions into Far Right parties and individual Barbarians around the World (including the one here who is due to earn £1m from a US speaking tour – 2 finance the spreading of his ignorant poison here).
As someone wrote in New Left Review “Fascism is the emergency committee of capitalism’ but I would argue this is perhaps a sign of their desperate weakness, Neo-Liberalism’s death knell is it’s drive for cheap labour which apart from dangerous levels of personal debt (the old credit card) restricts commodity purchase and as Streeckt argues with quantitative easing the rich and powerful ” haven’t a clue what to do.” But we do.
But as someone said in our meeting we need a counter narrative.
Diverse working people create the wealth and make societies work but the rich legally nick it – the politically ignorant Far Right try to divide diverse working people and the morons are now being funded to do this as useful idiots & thus fight for the rich!
Our counter narrative should be uniting diverse working people through grassroots, bottom up, participator, left wing democratic socialism!
Yours in international solidarity!
And to make this more human and to us and the most political citizens in every country it will be left wing democatic socialism.
But to most citizens it will probably just be a fairer, more equal and caring society that respects all diverse citizens and dare I say critically thinking citizens too who just love working humanity. X
Peter Hain is fueling this in Wales appearing on the Sunday Politics. Time for leadership to start to question motives of individual MP’s and sanction if fueling a fake Labour members take on the situation
Please complain to BBC; https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/?lang=en&reset=&uid=916344160
It’s not unheard of for our enemies to seed Labour groups with their flunkies specifically to make trouble – need to look for them being or having previously been members of opposing organisations, having attacked us in the past etc.
We need the most thorough investigation possible.
If it turns out that they really are Labour and really are racists they’re in the wrong party and we’ll be glad to see the back of them – but they’ll get a warm welcome from the Tories.
How will the Sun and the Mail cover this? Yesterday they were complaining police were wasting too much time on investigating messages on social media calling people who complained snowflakes,bet they are not so dismissive of this.
There is no doubt in my mind that this particular episode was contrived. What would be very interesting is to ascertain how many complaints and allegations of A/S by LP members have been lodged with the police during the past three years (prior to this current episode). I have never come across any myself. Has anyone else?.
And my point is this: That it’s precisely BECAUSE the smearers have never bothered with informing the police before – only the LP and the MSM – that this has now happened. And what I mean is that it was all planned and worked out in advance. The conspiritors were of course aware that there is always a backlog of cases – about a variety of things – and so you get one of your number on the inside to copy the paperwork in relation to anti-semitism cases/allegations, and then have someone unrelated to the LP pass it on to LBC, and ALL just in time for when the Met Commisioner just happens to be doing a phone-in program on LBC. And then your media buddies ‘transform’ it into what YOU, the conspiritors, brought about by your underhand machinations.
And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the few that actually DO constitute a hate crime, were made by imposters during the few weeks just prior to the ‘dossier’ being copied and passed on to LBC (to coincide with the Met Commisioner’s phone-in program).
And so anyway, hey presto, you’ve just ramped up the gravity of the whole A/S thing in the publics mind, because NOW…. the POLICE are investigating the matter.
The ingenuity and deviousness of the Smearers is boundless.
Yesterday I published a long report on what happened when I wrote an expose of MuralGate. Here is the summary in two pages. Although I say so myself I believe this deserves more scrutiny and so I would appreciate anyone publicising it. Thanks
https://www.academia.edu/s/1571b1d7a4/an-account-of-the-reception-of-muralgaga-in-two-pages
“Dossier” is one of those wnderful tabloid words no-one uses in real life. My guess is that the ‘Dossier” is a clutch of random papers half-inched from someone’s desk in the Compliance Section and then presented to a radio station with proven right wing form to a trumpet salute.
There’s a list of ‘prescribed people and bodies’ to whom whistleblowers may report their concerns:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/blowing-the-whistle-list-of-prescribed-people-and-bodies–2/whistleblowing-list-of-prescribed-people-and-bodies
LBC does not feature.
Criminal acts have been alleged so the police, as far as my thinking takes me, should have been the whistleblower’s first port of call – and failure to report crime can itself be an offence.
A cursory glance at the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998’s guidance suggests the anonymity of a whistleblower cannot be guaranteed.
If LBC claims the right to protect its source it may or may not be successful as far as I can tell.
Obviously I’ve no legal qualifications whatever so could be wrong on any or all counts.