Prof Jonathan Rosenhead was targeted by Special Branch in the 70s and 80s for opposing apartheid – and is now being targeted by Keir Starmer’s regime. He has disclosed his response dismantling the party’s racism and wilful ignorance
Jonathan Rosenhead is a Jewish retired London School of Economics professor whose decades-long record of fighting racism and apartheid is so strong that he was targeted by the Met’s Special Branch for his fight against South African apartheid.
And the Labour party suspended him for supposed antisemitism as part of its bid to purge left-wingers and supporters of Palestinian rights, in which Jewish anti-racism activists have been disproportionately persecuted.
Prof Rosenhead has taken the courageous decision to ignore Labour’s ban on targeted members disclosing details of their persecution, to publish in full his response dismantling the party’s risible suspension of him for citing history and quoting discussions that are on the public record – and its blatantly political abuse of antisemitism accusations to dictate what is acceptable Jewish opinion. The Labour party has so far failed to respond. It is reproduced below with his permission.
Jonathan Rosenhead: Appeal against Suspension from Labour Party
On 21 December 2021 I was sent a Notice of Suspension from the Labour Party. On January 1st 2022, having had no response from the Party to my request for an extension to the period allowed for my appeal, I sent you a message which consisted substantially of the following (emphasis added):
I now submit this letter as my notice of appeal against the decision. The grounds of my appeal are that there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the charge is proven and you provide none. I have already set out in detail the basis for claiming this in my response to your revised notice of investigation and I invite you to treat that response as incorporated in this notice of appeal.
I understand that this appeal will be heard by three members of the NEC and that this means that there will be an oral hearing, which I welcome. I wish it to be clear that I consider it to be my right to have an oral hearing of my appeal and I insist upon it, and upon the right to be accompanied by a legal adviser. I also reserve the right to amend or supplement this notice of appeal in the light of your reply or otherwise should I choose to do so.
This current document is sent, consistent with that message, as a substantive part of my appeal. I will organise my arguments under the headings of Content; Process; and Outcome.
Content of the allegations against me
The Notice of Investigation suggests that I might have
• demonstrated hostility or prejudice based on race, religion, or belief; and/or
• undermined the Party’s ability to campaign against racism.
You sent me three pieces of ‘evidence’ that, the document implied, were relevant to these charges:
• a 2018 interview in which I reported the unanimous view of five character witnesses for Ken Livingstone, all Jewish, at his Labour Party disciplinary hearing (which had taken place a year earlier) that nothing Livingstone had said was antisemitic;
• a comment in the same interview that the activities of the Board of Deputies and other Jewish organisations had made many UK Jews unnecessarily fearful about the threat to them of antisemitism within the Labour Party; and
• a passage within a 2-minute public talk I gave in 2017 in which I made a glancing reference to mass conversions to Judaism in the first millennium CE in North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
The first of these quotations was simply misrepresented in the ‘charge-sheet’. It was not an April 2018 personal comment by me on the remarks that had got Livingstone into trouble. The programme video is clear – I was giving a factual report on events that had taken place a year earlier. This was the view of Livingstone’s Jewish character witnesses, and it is verifiable. For some reason the Labour Party seems not to be happy with these facts. But not liking facts does not turn my stating them into antisemitic behaviour. So how can this piece of evidence support a decision to suspend my Party membership?
The second quotation is also a statement of fact, and in justifying it I can cite evidence from the exact period of the interview. For in her message to Labour MPs in February 2019 then-General Secretary Jennie Formby reported that between April 2018 and January 2019 the number of accusations of antisemitism by Labour members came to 673. A Labour spokesman said “These figures relate to about 0.1% of our membership”.
Yet the average public estimate of what proportion of Labour members had been personally accused of antisemitism (survey, Philo et al, 2019) was 34%. Relentless attacks from the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Chief Rabbi, amplified by one-sided media coverage, had undoubtedly contributed to this gross distortion. Here are just two examples. In March 2018 the Board of Deputies issued an open letter accusing Jeremy Corbyn of “siding with antisemites”. In August 2018 its Chair said that the Jewish community is “feeling nervous, we’re feeling anxious, it’s like Jeremy Corbyn has declared war on the Jews at home”. And by September 2018 a poll showed that nearly 40% of UK Jews would seriously consider emigrating if Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister.
There is a name for promoting as facts things that aren’t so: its fake news. Calling out fake news is a social, ethical and political duty. By citing my statement as potentially a disciplinary offence you are conniving at the promotion of untruths which you seem to regard as politically expedient. It doesn’t change the facts. But it does change the Labour Party for the worse.
Your third piece of ‘evidence’ deals with an extract from a brief talk I gave in 2017 about the many threads that make up the Jewish population. The fragment that the party’s intrepid investigators have homed in on deals with ancient Jewish history, which I mentioned in the context of this discussion of Jewish diversity. The existence around the 8th century CE of an extensive Jewish-ruled Khazar empire in which conversions to Judaism took place is not disputed – the Labour Party does not control historical research. See for example Peter Frankopan The Silk Roads, 2015. [Media columnist] Raphael Behr described Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People, which I cited at this point in my talk, as a “quiet earthquake of a book [which] is shaking historical faith in the link between Judaism and Israel”. Is Behr a party member? Perhaps he should be suspended.
All this evidence and argument was presented, with much more, in my rebuttal of the charges. The Party has decided that my behaviour merits punishment. But in its initial Notice of Investigation says nothing at all about how what I said violated any aspect of the party’s disciplinary code. Nor in the concluding Notice of Suspension is there any single sentence, not a word, about how the Party came to that conclusion. Would an organisation confident in its processes and in the defensibility of its decisions practice such radical opacity?
My response to your Notice of Investigation included a comprehensive deconstruction of the accusations made against me. Did the relevant NEC panel discuss this detailed rebuttal? It is unthinkable, surely, that a responsible body would allow such significant decisions to go through without discussing the case made by the ‘accused’? On the nod? But the available evidence suggests that this is exactly what happened. The panel meeting on December 1 2021, the one that decided to suspend me, decided a very large number of cases in just a single meeting. Perhaps allowing more than 4 minutes per case on average would improve the quality of justice, which currently seems quite strained.
Invalid Process
It is not difficult to set up disciplinary procedures in any organisation that respect natural justice. The consensus is broadly that the process should include the following components and features:
• The accused should be informed of the nature of the complaint, and who has made it.
• The charge should relate to clear guidelines on what is unacceptable behaviour available to the accused before the behaviour complained of.
• The charge should be clearly and unambiguously stated.
• The roles of investigator, prosecutor and judge should be separate and independent.
• The accused should have a right to a hearing at which s/he has the opportunity to contest both the evidence, and the link between evidence and charge.
• The disciplinary process should include a clear statement of the basis on which the disciplinary panel has reached its conclusion.
• There should be provision for an appeal on the substance of a decision, currently it is only permissible in relation to a process failure
• There should be a process in which the accused can appeal the verdict in person and refute counter-arguments.
Almost all of these are absent from the process that the Party has employed in my case, and in far too many others.
Here are just some of the ways in which the disciplinary case against me has violated these common-sense requirements. They are numbered below to make your task of responding to them a little simpler.
- You have not provided me with the name of the complainant or the text of her/his complaint. I only have ‘your word’ for it that there ever was a complaint. The Chakrabarti Report (2016), accepted by the Labour Party, says that the norm should be that “the member would be given notice of the fact and nature of the investigation into him or her and the identity of the complainant”.
- The full guidelines for conduct on the question of antisemitism (which seems, outlandishly, to be the charge against me) were adopted late in 2018 but kept secret from all members until a court case in 2021 (in which I was one of the plaintiffs) forced the NEC Code of Conduct on Antisemitism into the public domain. All the ‘evidence’ that the Party challenged me to explain away were from interviews and talks I gave in 2017 and early in 2018 – when there weren’t even secret guidelines.
- There is no charge! What the Labour Party offers as a charge is nothing of the kind. To be precise they assert that what I said “may reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on race, religion, or belief; and / or undermines the Party’s ability to campaign against racism”. That’s not like being charged with robbing a bank, or stealing from my employer, or assaulting someone, or even using offensive language. How the investigators or any other bit of the party could establish that the ‘evidence’ they offer is in any way connected (logically? causatively?) to these very abstract ‘charges’ is a mystery that was never shared with me. Indeed the wording of these charges, as you know, has nothing specific to do with my case. They are used identically in hundreds of cases against other members.
- Fundamentally the investigators, the prosecutors, the ‘disciplinary panels’ and (if I get one) the appeal panel are in no way independent of each other. They are evidently operating in concert, following the mandate given them by the leadershipAngela Rayner said in November 2020, expressing outrage that Jewish party members had experienced a hostile environment, “if I have to suspend thousands and thousands of members, we will do that”. She was apparently able both to predict the outcome of cases such as my own, and to experience no concern about the hostile environment she would put this and many other Jews into: an experience of totally unmerited investigation, suspension, expulsion.
- “The accused should have a right to a hearing at which s/he has the opportunity to contest the evidence, and the link between evidence and charge.” There has been no hearing. My case was dealt with in my absence by a panel processing dozens of cases in a single session, dealing with each in a matter of minutes. The papers sent to me in my Notice of Investigation provide not even a hint as to how what I had said substantiates the so-called ‘charges’.
- “The disciplinary process should include a clear statement of the basis on which the disciplinary panel has reached its conclusion.” This should include a response to my representations. The only documents I have received from the Party are the February 2021 Notice of Investigation and the Notice of Suspension received 10 months later. The former contained evidence but no substantive charges; the latter pronounced me guilty of all the alternative charges listed at point 3 above but with no explanation of the Panel’s thinking. Did the Panel think?
- Both the Notice of Suspension and the Notice of Investigation were Swiss cheese documents, in which it seemed that mice had eaten all the logical connections between charge and evidence. The latter Notice says that these were the charges, this is what you said, thank you for your submission, you are guilty, goodbye. The spaces between the charges, the evidence and the decision to suspend are just gaping holes.
- I am submitting these documents as my appeal. The Party says there is an appeal procedure, so I intend to make use of it. I will relish the opportunity to explain my case to the Appeal Panel.
In sum, the definition of a kangaroo court is one that ignores recognised standards of law or justice, ignores due process, and comes to a predetermined conclusion. Prove me wrong. Let the Party suddenly discover natural justice.
Outcome: The personal is political
A well-respected comrade wrote as he left the Party in despair last month, “it’s more than distasteful for non-Jews to dictate what views Jewish people may or may not express.” I think those operating the party’s disciplinary apparatus really should reflect on that. In the service of a partisan and disputed version of what classifies as ‘antisemitic’ you have arrogated to yourselves the right to determine what it is kosher to say about Israel, Palestine, the Board of Deputies, Jews, Jewish history and more besides.
Most of those in the Party hierarchy now so exercised about antisemitism seem to have suddenly discovered it almost as soon as Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader. For Jews, however, awareness of antisemitism is not a fashion item that one simply adopts when it is in style. I wrote about this personal lived experience in my response to your Notice of Investigation. I infer from the penalty that your panel has delivered that they cannot have read this account of growing up Jewish – so I attach it below as an Annex.
I have no reason to believe that the people operating this outrageous system are incapable of estimable personal relations. It is entirely possible that they have loved their parents, their partners, their pets, their children. But they have evidently lacked either the emotional intelligence, or the imaginative reach to understand that their party games are impacting on real people. Elsewise, how could this baseless conclusion, this verdict unimpeded by any concern for the actual meaning of words have included this component:
As a result of the finding of the NEC Panel, and in accordance with the Labour Party Rule Book, you shall be required to complete a specified training course following this period of suspension.
This ‘training’ would presumably be based on the Jewish Labour Movement sessions rolled out on zoom in June 2021 – a one-way transmission from a Zionist perspective which many participants found superficial, and patronising, as well as confusing.
Were it not that I see no evidence of self-awareness in any of your messages to me, this instruction that I submit to JLM training might almost suggest an admittedly macabre sense of humour. You have spent the past several years and now two investigations demonstrating in spades that you have no understanding at all of antisemitism, and no comprehension that this is a potentially lethal virus. You have trivialised it for tactical advantage.
I have been an educationalist throughout a 50-year working life. Specifically I have with others provided educational sessions on antisemitism to hundreds of Party members. Why on earth would I, or anyone, accept ‘training’ about antisemitism from anyone that you recommend?
Jewish awareness of antisemitism runs deep. I saw those pictures of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen camp as a child in 1945. In my home town Liverpool there were anti-Jewish riots in 1948. Like, I would imagine, virtually all Jewish children, I was alerted by my parents to be aware, even hyper-sensitive, to the fact that non-Jews might treat me differently, and less favourably. So although actual overt antisemitism directed at me personally has been rare (I would say less than once per decade) that awareness inculcated in childhood remains part of my makeup.
You think, or find it expedient to think, that statements of facts that are inconvenient, even that discussion of academic historical propositions that might undermine the foundation myths of Israel, should be classed as antisemitic. What is antisemitic is to tell Jews that their understanding of themselves is not permissible, to tell them that if they do not think and speak as permitted then they will be excluded and denigrated. How antisemitic can you get? And where does that end?
ANNEX
Who you have addressed this Notice to
I grew up in a Jewish, Zionist but secular household. My parents sent me and my brother to synagogue every Saturday but didn’t go themselves. I went to Cheder (religion classes) every week until I had gone through the agony of my barmitzvah – an excruciating performance for any introverted 13 year-old.
Being Jewish is or was a wall-to-wall experience. It’s an identity that you acquire and keep. Add in Zionism and it is a strong brew. I celebrated every Israeli military victory from 1948 through 1956 and 1967. And then with a viable state territory established I waited for Israel to make peace with its Palestinian neighbours and internal Palestinian population. But that didn’t happen. As Israel’s reprisals grew heavier my in-principle support for the state of Israel became increasingly overlaid with my criticisms of its actual behaviour. Even my mother by about 1990 and in her eighties was saying that this wasn’t the state that she had thought she was working for. (She had held many offices in Zionist organisations, as had both my maternal grandparents.)
This is a journey that those who are not Jewish have not had to make.
By 2002 with the heavy repression by the Israelis of the second intifada I felt it was time to say that this was not being done in my name – because according to the Israeli establishment it was being done in my name. Up to that time my involvement with politics (a theme in my life) had never been about my Jewish identity. I had been a Labour Parliamentary candidate in 1966; was on the Executive of the Anti-Apartheid movement a few years later; then involved with the Stop the Seventies Tour (a crucial stage in the sporting isolation of South Africa); and also from 1969 with the socially responsible use of science – which led to my campaigning activity about plastic bullets, then in widespread use in Ireland. There was more, but in none of this was my Jewish identity a factor.
So it came as a surprise, an unwelcome one, to find that I was involved in a political activity predicated on my ethnic/cultural/what you will identity.
Being Jewish, as I said before, is an enveloping experience. It is not discardable any more than other shaping influences such as class, or gender, or… Yet many Jewish people, without discarding that identity, have been forced by events to travel a path similar to mine in which the Israel-related aspects of their identity, while still constitutive, take on a different form. It is substantially because we are Jewish that we do care every much that Israel has become what it is.
For an insight into the personal effects of Israel’s transformation I would recommend the late Mike Marquese’s If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew. (Eccentrically for an American Jew, Mike also wrote beautifully about cricket.) Or you could read Tony Lerman’s The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist. Tony had been Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
So what about antisemitism? Well to anyone brought up as I was it was a part of our assumptions. My grandparents were born in (roughly) Lithuania and Poland and emigrated to the UK around the turn of the century, just before Jewish pogrom-related immigration led to the racist 1905 Aliens Act. My father grew up in the ghetto area of Leeds, my mother in a somewhat better neighbourhood. They simply assumed that Jews were at best tolerated in this country, and expected everything to be more difficult for Jews, that Jews would have to be better than non-Jews to get on etc etc. All their friends without exception were Jewish (though my father as a university professor also moved in what for him was a semi-alien gentile world. He took care to be as restrained, ie ‘English’, as possible in order to fit in.)
I was socialised into being alert to the possibility of antisemitism. Only gradually have I realised where this came from. My father when a post-doctoral student at Gottingen in 1930 took a side trip to Poland and organised a reunion between two branches of his family living in different villages; it involved hiring a small coach. When much later I asked him about those family members, I was simply told that none, at all, had survived the Holocaust. But of course the Jewish alertness to antisemitism goes back through generations of history – the mediaeval blood libel; the slaughter in that tower in York; the accusations of poisoning of wells; the restrictions of the Pale of Settlement; and the fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The awareness of the provisionality of tolerance has a taproot stretching back centuries. That was why all my parents’ friends were Jewish; and why all their friends were Jewish.
I am telling you all this to give you a take on how outrageous it feels, in effect, to be accused of antisemitism. Outrageous. It actually gives me the sense that whoever drafted this Notice has quite simply failed to grasp the enormity of antisemitism as a concept or practice.
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