Antisemitism smear-campaign against Wrack as he takes over as NASUWT general secretary

Israeli government-linked groups not affiliated to union target left-winger for not believing antisemitism scam – and apparently for wanting to end Gaza genocide

Supporters of new NASUWT teachers’ union general secretary Matt Wrack are outraged at what they describe as an “antisemitism smear campaign” being waged against Wrack as opponents try to undermine his appointment.

A Guardian article on the attempt by NASUWT Welsh regional officer Neil Butler, who is married to a former president of the union, to obtain an injunction to prevent Wrack’s appointment – uncontested after Butler was blocked from standing because he is not a member of the union – which appears to take its lead from an earlier article by Jewish News hack Lee Harpin, claims that the appointment “caused unease among the estimated 1,000 Jewish teachers within the NASUWT, with some arguing that he was insensitive to allegations of antisemitism within the Labour party during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership“. However, it bases this assertion on a claim by the so-called ‘Partnership for Jewish Schools‘ (PJS) that Wrack’s appointment, which the group says it finds “deeply troubling”, that “The many Jewish members of the NASUWT are likely to find this appointment particularly challenging” in other words, this is an unevidenced assumption.

Lee Harpin, who wrote the original piece subsequently picked up by an array of pro-Israel, anti-Corbyn papers, has been described in court as “the dauphin of phone-hacking” and was a central figure in the ‘Labour antisemitism scam’ and the author of a ‘litany of lies‘ in hit-pieces against left-wingers during Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party that cost his then-employers at the right-wing Jewish Chronicle a fortune in repeated libel payouts.

Harpin’s anti-Wrack article lists complaints from the so-called ‘Jewish Leadership Council’ (JLC) as well as from the PJS – but fails to mention that the PJS was created as part of the JLC and remained formally part of it until 2022, as the PJS website itself notes:

Harpin’s article on Wrack also fails to note that the PJS CEO Rabbi David Meyer “works closely with… the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs”:

Israel lobby group the JLC, PJS’s parent group – which was at the heart of the ‘Labour antisemitism’ smear campaign during Corbyn’s leadership and demanded of Labour, once ‘Zionist without qualification’ Keir Starmer took over, to ‘vet’ candidates to ensure they were Israel-friendly – also claimed it knew what Jewish NASUWT members would think of Wrack’s appointment:

Jewish teachers who are members of the NASUWT will be rightly concerned by a general secretary who played a leading role in downplaying  antisemitism in the Labour Party.

And former full-time Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst, now a parachuted-in ‘Labour’ MP who had paid Israel advocates campaigning for him during the general election, also got in on the act, according to Harpin, claiming that:

It is disappointing that the executive of NASUWT has gifted a political resurrection to Matt Wrack

But Akehurst also gave the game away about the real reasons the Israel lobby is so concerted in its attack on the new general secretary – protecting Israel and its apologists from criticism:

I hope Mr Wrack does not drag the NASUWT into militancy aimed at undermining a Labour government or into NEU style visceral anti-Zionism.

And Harpin, who claimed to have found one Jewish NASUWT member, out of the purported thousand Jewish members, who found Wrack’s appointment ‘genuinely frightening’, gave a hint at his own reasoning, highlighting Wrack’s support for the many anti-Zionist Jews who supported Corbyn and his call for action against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians:

A 2020 social media post by Wrack saw him single out the anti-Zionist comedian Alexi Sayle for praise. Posting a pro-Corbyn video from Sayle, Wrack wrote: “Alexei Sayle on being Jewish, a comedian and anti- establishment… … and #Corbyn”…

…Wrack’s speech to the 2024 TUC Congress noted the October 7 Hamas terror attack, but continued: “We meet almost a year in from the attacks of 7 October and the launch of the Israeli war on Gaza, now expanded into the West Bank. We send solidarity to the Palestinian people in the face of this horrifying onslaught.”

Addressing the May Day trade union march last year, Wrack said: “We need to act against the war in Gaza, disrupt arms deliveries, and force the government to end their complicity with the massacre of the Palestinian people.”

Wrack’s supporters believe the campaign against Wrack is coordinated and aimed at getting him out of the job and nobbling him if Butler manages to force an election, telling Skwawkbox that:

The smear campaign being waged against Wrack in the media seems to have the aim of unseating [him] and smearing him with unmeasurable but damaging charges to influence the outcome of any election if one occurs.

Israel has killed at least 200,000 Palestinians during the genocide so far – overwhelmingly civilians and mostly women and children – and since March has been engaged in a starvation blockade of Gaza’s surviving population of two million or so people.

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