Announcement

Inquiry into leaked Labour report is open for evidence. Here’s how to submit yours

The ‘Forde Inquiry‘, into the leaked Labour report alleging racism, abuse, misdirection of funds, obstruction of complaint processes and undermining the party’s election campaigns by former senior party staff, is now calling for evidence.

Labour staff have been asked to make their submissions to the inquiry, but members can – and must – also do so, to ensure that the impact of the actions exposed by the report are on the record.

The terms of reference of the inquiry state that:

Labour members and activists should contribute whatever evidence or testimony they feel is appropriate, but the SKWAWKBOX recommends that particular emphasis should be given to:

  • the impact of senior staff conduct on the results of campaigning efforts
  • resources withheld or letters into HQ ignored
  • treatment of/response to BAME members
  • members suspended for years, while staff allegedly delayed cases for political ends
  • deprivation of voting rights in leadership and other elections resulting from suspension
  • ‘stitched up’ candidate selections

along with any other allegations made in the report.

Submissions must be made by email to info@fordeinquiry.org no later than 5pm on Friday 24 July.

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20 comments

  1. As a member if there is not a root and branch clear out of Quislings and their controllers then we should all join the class action against the party and named individuals

    1. This:
      https://thelawreviews.co.uk/edition/the-class-actions-law-review-edition-4/1225675/england-and-wales
      seems to suggest such class actions may be possible – I’d been under the impression they were restricted to consumer and competition law but apparently not entirely.
      I don’t know whether or not counter suits are possible in class action cases, but I imagine they might be for ‘opt in’ actions with named commplainants.
      I’d chip in to a crowd fund and accept joint liability up to a fixed amount (chosen by me) if necessary, assuming that’s possible, but I wouldn’t commit to an unlimited risk.

  2. Are LP and Starmer doing anything about Johnson regime and ‘state’ covertly pushing ahead with the long, slow march to abolishing jury trials? According to the ‘secret barrister’ not on your nelly. Ah, don’t tell me Covid isn’t being cynically and deliberately used to push through all sorts of totalitarian measures.
    https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1275362492470919169

    1. Starmer ought surely to have a strong opinion on this – has he expressed it – and if not, why not?

    2. Oh and as BLM is ‘trending’ a thread from a BAME Lawyer re BAME judges and magistrates and the value of jury trials.
      https://twitter.com/Joanna__Hardy/status/1275164340639993856

      The British constitution is being eroded along with many of our ‘rights’ including the right to fully informed consent to medical procedures with a threat of forced vaccination which could well become a requirement to get a ‘passport’/card to live a normal, free life if there is no push back. Are the ‘left’ going to take on these fundamentally important issues? It will be no good crying after the fact, no good waking up into a nightmare of authoritarian dictatorship that is now up and running to install itself in its jack boots. Once we give up personal sovereignty over our own bodies and minds rape can no longer be a crime, just think about wider implications never mind what more the corporate medical model could do to us in the name of Covid.

      1. BTW wasn’t it that neoliberal Blunkett that tried to introduce ID cards under the Blair regime? ID cards and other ways of tracking everything you do and as ways of enforcing compliance to a Corporatocracy have been long standing goals of authoritarians.

  3. ..But why would the new regime clear out the every people who are its allies and actively fought against the previous leadership?

  4. It is interesting to hear the BBC News today (Friday 26th June,), describing the imminent EHRC Report into anti-Semitism as damning. Has the Report been leaked? Has an initial copy been given to MSM or has the BBC made logiical assumptions; as there isn’t a snowballs chance in hell that the Labour Party & Jeremy Corbyn in particular, will not be made ‘accountable’ for anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Once Jeremy embraced the IHRA definition & EHRC will do the same, the Labour Party must be guilty as charged by their own definition if you dare criticise Israel.

    1. Jeremy did NOT ’embrace’ the IHRA definition, so why do you use such a word when it is a falsehood!

      Jeremy was forced to accept the definition after months of criticism and castigation by the MSM and the usual suspects – ie the so-called ‘moderates’, along with the JLM and the CAA and LAA and the BoD etc.

      The reality is that if the IHRA definition had never existed, the saboteurs – the fascists – would have been just as effective in their Smear Campaign of Jeremy and left-wing members and their character assassination of both.

  5. The longer the Labour Party lasts, and the more powerful, organisationally, it becomes the less capable it is of resisting the dictation of the dominant class’s media.
    And this is despite the fact that that media-TV, radio and print, has never been so widely discredited and distrusted as it is today. And despite the actual existence of numerous new media platforms allowing the development of a working class press.
    Why is this? Why is it that the long tradition of working class press and working class political education- going back to the eighteenth century- has virtually disappeared? The antisemitism trick, coordinated by the Israeli Embassy, would never have worked against Foot or Wilson, because the party’s supporters were proofed against such libels and expected the media to lie in order to destroy socialism.
    Part of the problem lies in the acceptance, as a result of the opening up of the education system in the sixties, of the ruling class ideology and ideological machinery as part of the national culture, rather than being that of the class which owns it and uses it for its own purposes.
    What the campaign against Corbyn showed, and the election of Starmer confirmed, is the power of anti Labour propaganda over the party membership- the extraordinary ability of the anti-socialists to convince socialists that they were racists, anti-semites and irrational and unfair in their championing of the cause of downtrodden Palestinians. The Party membership was convinced that black is white and that they should ignore the clear evidence of their own “lying eyes.”
    And then that they should put aside the recently acquired experience of twenty years of Blairism and elect another leader who, in fact, shares none of the values or aspirations of the working class, who is a convert to the Judaistic religion, and is so completely committed to imperialism and capitalism that he is a proud member of the trilateral commission.
    How did the Labour Party become a suicidal cult? How did members come to accept the authority of councillors and MPs- with their own easily discernible careerist agendas- to lead the membership by their noses to the political slaughter?

    1. The state education system has always been one of indoctrination, you only have to look at history has been portrayed in academic text books to see this.Professors Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn and others wrote about historical distortion and suppression long ago. Academia has long ago been mostly bought and paid for by the establishment plus the corporations.

      In regards to the media, the State Broadcaster was recognised by J.B Priestly and others of being the mouth piece of the ruling elite as indeed the vast majority of the MSM even the so called liberal media even the Guardian as John Pilger. and Jonathan Cooke have wrote so eloquently about. The power of propaganda has always been there from the days of convincing the public to have young men slaughtered on the battlefields of Europe pretending it was some noble accepting the mantra they were dying for a noble cause when in reality it was about economic hegemony . To frightening them to believe that a country which had lost 27,000,000 people, most of its valuable agricultural land, a large amount of industry and been through a very very brutal war of annihilation was a threat to West ie Reds under the Bed etc.

      The right wing solidified under Blair and his cabal : they purged the party of many potential left wing MPs via there central listing system and over decades took over many CLPs as the power of the trade unions was diminished via the concerted efforts of the City of London, the Judiciary, the concentrated power of the propaganda machine,Tories, the veneer of democracy and the Tory fellow travellers in the Labour Party such as Neil Kinnock .

      The major difference between the sixties and now was the fact that many members had been through the economic depression of the thirties, through a million horrors of the Second World War and used their own bitter experiences to try and decipher fact from fiction plus of course the notion of a better society, solidarity being the key.

      Unfortunately, many who swallowed the swill of AS and the knight of the realms fairy tales plus the Covid-19 hyperbole have forgotten just what their forefathers went through. Looks like they will have to relive those experiences !!!

  6. What a joke ! Here’s how to save paper in your submission to this ‘enquiry’, and/or indeed, saving valuable time typing online – simply DON’T BOTHER contributing anything to a bogus investigation entirely controlled by a corrupt, cynical ascendant PLP Right ! Does anybody here who has been watching the current behaviour of the new Starmerite neo Blairite leadership really think any Lefty-oriented submissions will have any weight in today’s Labour Party – hell bent on purging the Left and cementing Labour into becoming , permanently, once again (after its mildly radical short-lived ‘Corbynite’ aberration) , the loyal, uncritical, Reserve Party of UK Capitalism ?

  7. Submission will lead to targeting and gathering of info on what the knight will class as subversive and destructive individuals to be cast out in the Witchunt.Thats certainly the idea behind this farcical consultation.,and witness statements.

    1. What do they think they know about you?

      Political parties harvest personal data to create profiles on voters, most of it wrong
      The UK’s three main political parties are collecting personal data on voters, but much of it is wrong and its use may fall foul of data protection laws

      Labour
      The Labour Party is the most prolific collector of personal data, holding up to 100 pages on each individual, broken down into more than 80 categories of data.

      The party has been reluctant to disclose information to people who request their data under the Data Protection Act and has repeatedly delayed its response to individual requests, potentially putting it in breach of data protection law.

      However, earlier subject access requests and research by the ORG shows that Labour gathered data from canvassing the electoral register and other sources to estimate personal data on each voter.

      This included data about their political opinions, including estimates of how strongly each voter supported remaining in the European Union (EU), how strongly they supported the Scottish National Party (SNP), and how likely they were to switch from Tory to Labour.

      The party also keeps estimates of the income of voters, how strongly they rate the importance of childcare, and how important they feel it is to devolve powers to the Scottish Parliament.
      https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252485111/Political-parties-harvest-personal-data-to-create-profiles-on-voters-most-of-it-wrong

  8. July 24. Well, well. I thought it was going to report in July.

    Here’s a rough scenario. The EHRC report will come out and damn Corbyn and his staff. There will be a tsunami of media and PLP calls for booting people on the left out, maybe even Corbyn.

    The Forde inquiry will then say that the EHRC report has answered many questions and throw in the bin submissions criticising the HQ staff. The only things that it will act on will be the leakers and Corbyn’s staff. I’ve read quotes today that are of LP staff defending the racism, sexism and awful bullying as “office banter”. Banter that would have you kicked out of any job is going to be condoned by the LP. Possibly one or two people might be disciplined.

    This isn’t even going to be “both-sided”, it is going to be a very rough ride. I hope the left on the NEC are prepared.

    It might be an idea for submissions to be collated somewhere and responses by the Forde inquiry recorded.

  9. The Labour Party is also seeking contributions from members on the replacement for Universal Credit. We’ve all complained about it so please get involved.


    How you can help shape Labour’s Universal Credit replacement

    Jonathan Reynolds
    Labour is committed to developing a complete replacement for Universal Credit. We believe this to be essential to meeting our objectives of ending child poverty in the UK. This is a huge mission – and only one of several major policy challenges the shadow work and pensions team is working on – that will develop a modern social security system that offers real support to everyone.

    Earlier this month, myself and shadow employment minister Seema Malhotra hosted a roundtable for around 80 members as part of Labour’s national policy forum process, which sparked excellent debate and delivered new ideas. A few days later, I did an event with over 250 members of affiliated trade unions on the future of social security hosted by the Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation (TULO). And we’ll do as many events as there is demand for because we need the active democratic involvement of our members and unions.

    That’s why today, we are specifically asking people to submit their views on the future of UC to the national policy forum’s work, pensions and equality commission. I am keen to hear whether people believe we should continue with a single combined benefit covering both in-work and out-of-work support. Having seen the process by which people have been transferred onto UC, I am conscious that any reform must be done in a way that minimises the impact to claimants. So I ask: what is the right way to do this?
    https://labourlist.org/2020/06/how-you-can-help-shape-labours-universal-credit-replacement/

  10. Labour’s ,Tony Blair-created , Policy Forum structure and process (set up to rob policy forming from Conference) , and continued cynically under Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership (after firm promises it would be scrapped !) , and now on it goes, is just a joke of a ‘consultation’ – none of the stuff being produced (always banal tripe of the most general sort) ever has any genuine role in the creation of the eventual Party Manifesto. It’s just so ‘New Labour’, ie, lots of time-wasting bogus consultation – which is then ignored by the current Party Leadership – who actually write the Manifesto. And it is guaranteed that Party Conference will from now on be gutted of any policy formulating role – as it was under Blair and Brown. Don’t bother sending stuff to the bogus Policy Forum process. A waste of time. Only the troll, Steve H apparently thinks it is worthwhile !

    1. jpenney – If people are stupid enough to follow your advise and refuse to engage then it should come as no surprise to them that their opinions will be overlooked. You don’t want people to be heard you just want to foster disunity.
      Maybe the penny will drop one day why you have wasted decades of your life searching for a political home that will tolerate you.

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