‘Significantly inaccurate’; “The publication had no evidence to support that the complainant had been expelled from the Labour Party for making “sickening” comments about Jews”
The Jewish Chronicle has been ordered to publish a correction to vile claims about a former Labour member – the latest in a series of humiliating retractions of claims made by its hack Lee Harpin.
Harpin’s article, which the Chronicle published online with the title “Hampstead and Kilburn Labour chair thanks ex-member who was expelled for ‘sickening’ comments about Jews“, was the subject of another damning ruling by IPSO, which reported that the paper was unable to provide any evidence for its headline claim about the reason for expulsion – and that the expelled ex-member had been excluded from the party because of public support for another party:
The publication provided articles and material written by the complainant that it had alleged formed the unofficial reason he was expelled from the Labour Party, however this was directly contradicted by the official basis provided by the Labour Party. The publication was not able to provide any evidence to support its position that the Labour Party had considered any of the material it wished to rely on when reaching its decision. In addition, the publication had not demonstrated that comments made by the complainant about Jews were raised in Parliament. The Committee did not consider that going on to report that the complainant was expelled for supporting another political group clarified the position or mitigated the significance of these inaccuracies. The publication had no evidence to support that the complainant had been expelled from the Labour Party for making “sickening” comments about Jews which were raised in parliament, and particularly where this featured in the headline of the online article, it had failed to take care not to publish inaccurate information and there was a breach of Clause 1(i). Where the inaccuracy had falsely stated that the complainant had made antisemitic remarks that had been discussed in Parliament, which was a very serious accusation which could have had a detrimental effect on the complainant, this was a significant inaccuracy and a correction was required under Clause 1(ii).
Lee Harpin and the Chronicle have ‘form’. Earlier this year, the paper apologised and paid ‘undisclosed’ compensation to Audrey White, a pensioner and Liverpool Labour member after publishing a ‘litany of lies’ in multiple articles, all written by Harpin. Two months ago, they apologised and paid ‘substantial’ compensation for ‘utterly untrue’ allegations against a Muslim Labour councillor when it claimed she had ‘orchestrated’ a campaign against a Jewish MP, ignored antisemitic comments and tried to interfere with a vote.
Last year, the Chronicle paid £50,000 in damages, plus costs and an apology, to a charity that helps Palestinians after implying it had links to terrorism – though for once, the article was not penned by Harpin – in another attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
Despite this track record, the Labour right continues to leak information to Harpin and the Chronicle to damage left-wingers.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
⭕️ confidence in Starmer ⭕️ in Evans ⭕️ in Margaret Beckett ⭕️ confidence in all that coup saboteur gang ⭕️ confidence in coward pathetic silent so called “Left” PLP who still feel bending over for the parasites cuts it… that writing some tame letter then disappearing down some rat hole to hide… waiting to pop out in fair weather. A BIG FAT ZER⭕️
They will never learn. They prefer the safety of their cushy self-serving career interest. Even Burgon for whom i voted, dripped tiresome drivel about “unifying for a Labour victory”.
What victory? What Labour? What Labour Prime Minster? What Labour PM works to wreck the best chance we had in my lifetime at TWO ELECTIONS, plotted repeated walkouts, LIED, lied in a way that put ALL of us at risk, damaged reputations, DEFILED the memory of hundreds of thousands… What LABOUR prime minister does that?
Right Wing doing as they do is no surprise. I totally expect that. Yes they’ve sunk to unimaginable dishonesty. They’ve sunk to disgusting disgraceful depths. BUT, it’s the laid back… LAZY, cowardly COMPLIANT … COMPLICIT failure of so called Socialist which distresses me.
As of the last few years, real socialist MPs have been sitting back and watching themselves get murdered by the right wing saboteurs.
They are complicit by the not speaking out.
I dont have much faith in the Socialist Campaign group, great values no backbone (perhaps cause they’ve hitched their political careers to the Labour wagon and they dont want tpo rock the boat
No its doesn’t Signposts. You are deliberately trying to deflect attention away from the despicable smears in the Jewish Chronical by blaming Socialists for what has happened and making false references to our being lazy etc
You pollute these posts with long drawn out attacks on Socialists disguised as concern for us and our principles. You have been sussed – time to clear off and assume a new identity
Keep going as you are going then Smartboy. Best of luck. No such luck for those who need change. No such luck for those who hope that inteligent people like you will ask WHAT can YOU do differently?
It is those with a determination to learn nothing who have betrayed the many. It is you who should clear off. People who cannot defend their position are the only ones who try to shut others up. I have never done that and never will. I think and present my points as best as i am able. i never complain about the length of other posters or grammar or punctuation etc. Skip past what you cannot understand. What gives the right to dictate what others should read??? HOW DOES THAT ENCOURAGE OTHERS???
Also what’s the point of your brevity and punctuation if you cannot make your case so you try to shut others up? No wonder the Right Wing walk all over us and the electorate waits forever. People like you strangle development. You can only manage down some dark stagnant swamp whining about the whole world being against you. What’s the point of that???
Oh and you only want to hear that with which they already agree. What’s the point of that??? Ask yourself. Just regurgitate the same whining and complaining amongst other pathetic whiners. You are the type because you have ALLOWED yourself to become stale and impotent, crush change.
You only come to life to stifle change. With mentalities like yours, the status quo guard dogs need not infiltrate us. You do the work of a thousand of “Spy Cops”.
People should always be suspicious of those who try to silence others. Can’t u see the irony? Those who try to silence others do EXACTLY what Starmer and Evans are doing…. along with the CAA, IHRA, BOD, etc etc can’t you see that??? The Irony and blindness… the incoherence is astonishing🚨🚨🚨
Oh and ps, in front of a packed large CLP meeting DOMINATED by the Right Wing in all the key posts AND MP to nominate the new leader and dep, I stood up and spoke to support Richard Burgon and RBL.
The general feedback was “best speech” etc etc etc One of those who was kind enough to come over to say thanks, said they had known Jeremy for over FOURTY YEARS. Could go on but, it was not the first time to be singled out for superlative praise. WHY? How could I do it? Everyone could by thinking, consideration an putting your views forward as best as you can, ESPECIALLY when it is challenging.
Steve knows my credentials. So i do mot have to account to you or any 1984 style shutter upper. You should be ashamed
🚨🚨🚨
Smartboy “You pollute” yourself and the left with your lazy refusal to learn. The Jewish Chronicle is doing what it does. We need to focus on what we need to develop, build, correct. Fail to do that and history just repeats itself.
Learn from others. The Telegraph the Mail and MSM Talkradio and LBC are and have been FULL of criticism of the Tories, Johnson, Cummings, etc yet they win. Yes they do have the benefit of the status quo but despite a few howlers, in the main the Right Wing ARE better at putting their points across. WHY? They turn up WHY? Look at SH / SteveH / davidh / etc, he turns up. I may disagree with him but give him credit LEARN THEY TURN UP and put their case forward DESPITE the hostile reception. When i requested an update re the slate for our GC delegate meeting to nominate for the NEC, it was Right Wing SH who answered promptly, NOT YOU Smartboy. Not you.
Yes they do mostly get an easy ride but often don’t and they STILL turn up. Election night, i’ve already pointed out here, Starmer’s cabal were out on all the radio stations i was monitoring – LBC , Talkradio and some BBC 5Live and even R4, to compare coverage and consistency etc.
FACT the Right Wing were not being LAZY. They were out in force. There was not one single one from our side. It took about a week or more b4 i heard any of Jeremy’s PLP or union allies on the radio.
Before his dreadful treatmeant CHRIS WILLIAMSON was always the one i heard out and about defending Jeremy. Same with Ken and George Galloway who was always defending Jeremy Chris was the ONLY PLP always turning up. Dianne occasionally despite absolutely DREADFUL abuse for decades Amnesty International confirmed. YET DIANNE TURNED UP and i know she is on TV also.
So my observations are fair and accurate. If you can’t cope and want moist comforting pap you need not read.
🚨🚨🚨
Has Smartboy been talking to White Flag Man?
Reply to Timfrom
No I’m just totally fed up with Signposts non stop nastiness which he uses to deflect attention from important issues – this time the lies published by the Jewish Chronicle about a former Labour member. This is what happens – he posts a rant usually about the “cowardice” or some other criticism of the left. People respond and before you know it there is post after post in reply about the topic he has raised and not about the issue Skwawkbox has highlighted. This tactic allows Signposts to set the agenda and shut down discussion of, in this particular case, the despicable conduct of Mr Harpin. He does this all the time and as I said before I am just fed up with it.
I haven’t picked up on any deliberate nastiness or attempted closing down of debate by spnwc, but then again, I tend to scroll past comments that run over several paragraphs (it’s meant to be a comment thread, not an ego trip, j penney!). Might you be over-thinking things? I’d say Steve H is far more guilty of hijacking threads and making them all about him…
Maybe Timfrom – His posts really get on my nerves – all totally negative, swiping at socialists in the name of socialism and deflecting from whatever issue Skwawkbox has raised. Maybe he is just an idiot but I don’t think so. I think there is method in his madness – here we are discussing him instead of Harpins dangerous libel against a former member. Job done.
the left (in and out of Labour) needs to learn how to fight and win,I’m not sure why the right runs rings around us is it organisation discipline or focus (I bet the money doesn’t hurt)
Is Harpin somewhat obsessed with his scouring for any piece of malign gossip to use against Corbyn supporting allies? I would be devastated if my journalistic ethics were constantly being upbraided by my professions regulator for the immoral use of his ‘litany of lies’. Does the Chronicle have so many financial backers that they are willing to carry on paying compensation to injured parties?
In a nutshell, yes. A weird little right wing rag, read by no one is the conduit for putting lies into MSM. It’s well worth the bailouts.
i deeply believe, to the point of physical distress … i can feel the stress, that we should stop harping on about Harpin and the rest. The URGENT questions are WHAT are our lot doing? Do you feel that they are doing anything different? Do you feel THEY care?
We know that Starmer, Evans, Harpin etc don’t care about us. That’s OBVIOUS. We have seen more than enough. HALF-MILLION who may never have dreamt of joining a political party, including me, suspected the threat within weeks of choosing Jeremy to lead. Suspicions were more than confirmed within months. No doubts should have remained after the first coup. It is INEXPLICABLE, the response from our lot after the second coup. Almost UNBEARABLY puzzling after the prompt dumping of the REMAINIACARY by Mr Remain as soon as their OBVIOUS purpose of losing the election and McDonnell’s premature appearance on the MSM to say IF we lose he and Jeremy will step down etc.
The suspension and withdrawal of the Whip from Jeremy, shows the catastrophic result of almost total silence, near total invisibility and TOTAL appeasement … all from the get go. The tragedy of popping up LONG after lies have taken root and the EXISTENTIAL LIE Starmer was ALLOWED to deceive the membership, is there for ALL to see. Yet STILL, despite all of this where are our lot❔ Where ARE they❔ Where ❔❔❔
it excels at that role
Mud sticks Michael Kennedy and that is the purpose of the vile lies printed by the Jewish Chronicle They have lied about individuals and a charity and have slung mud at them in order to destroy the reputations of the pro Palestinian activists involved thereby undermining the cause they support. Clearly, like the Labour Party , they view people who support Palestinians as antisemetic so nothing is too bad to say about them.
The Labour party routinely expels such people and the Jewish Chronicle libels them – two sides of the one coin. We have seen the whip removed from our most high profile Palestinian supporter , Jeremy Corbyn and then we had Angela Rayner promising to expel 1000s and 1000s more pro Palestinian activists – antisemites every one, in her view – at a joint Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour Movement event.
I genuinely think that the party has crossed the line from opposing antisemitism into anti Arab racism and Islamophobia as supporting the oppression of Arabs and Muslims in Israel Palestine and Gaza can be described as nothing else. The party’s stance on this must cause a lot of hurt to our Muslim brothers and sisters and those of Arab heritage. However as has been demonstrated time and again by elements within the party Arab and Muslim lives don’t matter.
I also have deep pity for our Charedi , secular and socialist Jewish brothers and sisters who do not share the views of the Jewish Chronical and who appear to have been especially targeted for sanctions by the Labour party, Jo Bird being a prime example. This good woman has been hounded by our party on more than one occasion because she wants to uphold the human rights of all including Palestinians.
I dread to think what the next few years will bring. Our Labour traditions of fraternalism and comradeship have already gone down the pan and I can’t see things getting any better under the current leadership.
mud sticks lies at the heart of tory/msm strategy as does A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on you could argue til your blue in the face that Jez was not an IRA supporter but the damage is done now (by the Sun I think)
Signpost spewing forth his usual shit again, I see, as he does every single day! Oh, and the poor thing’s physically distressed by it all. Do you still have a broken heart because of that insensitive Jeremy Corbyn giving Keir Starmer a job in his shadow cabinet!
Signpost is a paid shill, and THAT is why he is on this site every single day posting comments all day long, MOST of which are to discredit the left with lies and falsehoods, and ‘Ray’ is just another of the shills secondary personas. If you did a random search of skwawkbox articles during the past month, for example, chances are that you’d find at least ONE post by signpost in the first three or four comments. In the thread prior to this one the second comment is by him, in the thread before that the first and the forth, and the thread before that third and fourth, and the one before that he must have been having a t-break, but in the one before THAT the second comment is by him, and the thread before that the fourth comment is by him, and the one before that the second, fourth, sixth, seventh and ninth, and the one before that third and fourth and sixth, and sixth in the one before that, second in the thread before that one, and second in the one before that….. And on top of THOSE comments, he posted around another forty or so in the above threads. At the very least!
And needless to say, he ‘participated’ in the recent Big Scam on here (along with a bunch of other shills and their secondary personas) in trying to have the readership believe that Jeremy had done a big u-turn and climb-down in his FB statement and was saying the very opposite of what he’d said three weeks beforehand (which led to his suspension) on the day the EHRC published its report. But he WASN’T, and they were two ENTIRELY different points. Saying that CONCERNS about anti-semitism (in the LP) have not been exaggerated is NOT the opposite of saying that the SCALE of the problem of A/S in the LP has been massively overstated and exaggerated. But signpost and the other shills posted a ‘series’ of comments concocted and contrived to dupe readers into believing it WAS. The following link takes you to the first comment in the ‘series’ – sequence of comments:
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/11/17/right-winger-akehurst-facing-islamophobia-complaint-of-anti-palestinian-racism-days-after-nec-election-and-labours-acceptance-of-all-lmn-labour-islamophobia-report/#comment-165044
PS Apologies to everyone who posted below
Allan, Ray’s comment above is the first of his I’ve noticed – not saying he hasn’t posted before but if he was a frequent commenter I think his name would be more familiar.
If he were a paid shill he could only be earning pennies with a work rate like that.
Windchimp? Maybe, but wouldn’t people hiring trolls pick ones who could write a bit – instead of like an adolescent texting with his phone in his pocket?
Nobody cares, Allan.
Does he think this drivel out of thin air or is there an unhinged leaker feeding his tormented hatred of TLP? Sadly I wasn’t sure if I was being ironical. At least his chapel should Chuck hlm out. I take it that he is in a union or CBI. There is an awful lot of money , now more than before, and see settlement and retraction are minor incidents, mosquitoes on the elephant of their much larger game. To say the very least would be that they punch above their body weight. Brown envelopes are certainly part of fitness plan. Would one consider an ex paid member with a grudge would leak rubbish while posing as ,a close insider. They’re all rags and they love it. For the money and not the news. All the best.
spend an hour or two looking at the twitter feeds of Harpin,Pollard,Riley or Tracey Ann Oberman et al and you’ll quickly guess what theyre upto
If harpin’s an NUJ member or a member of another journalist’s professional body/union , it’s high time they binned him as he’s quite probably THE most compulsive bullshitter giving (The few) decent journalists a bad rep.
The well below bog(roll) -standard rag that is the JC are more than welcome to continue his (and pollard’s) employ and cost themselves many, many shekels in the process. I wouldn’t contaminate me arse by using it a bogroll.
Does NUJ have a Standards Committee
I doubt it, there’d be a ten year queue if there was.
The only way is ethics
The cult of new Labour 2.0 and their vile ties to scumbag journalism these convenient leaks of information that they always screw up due to total incompetence and then have to pay huge damages.
Do they believe this whole disgusting circus of vile humans, with vile abhorrent views attacking socialists helps them? All it does is promote hatred and extreme views…
The Guardian has rveelaed that a certain Mayor has been arrested. It also says that Mersey Police have refused to name any of the five arrested. “Sources” have informed the Guardian that the arrested Mayor has been suspended from the Labour Party.
So no-one has been told who it is (he’s named in the Guardian), but the Labour Party knew his name and suspended him. I wonder who informed the Guardian …………………..
I wonder who informed the Labour party! Perhaps the same person? Anderson’s had it coming for ages anyway
They will plead innocent when an inevitable backlash occurs. What could be more AS. than that?
and this why I nicknamed him Lee ‘IPSO nofacto’ Harpin
Loo Harpic?
The JC is forced to make big payouts It has a small readership but keeps going. There are deep pockets funding its compulsive lying.
one thing that interested me recently was the man who was part of the consortium that rescured the JC
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/23/jewish-chronicle-saved-by-consortium-after-messy-takeover-battle