While the Tories were imploding last week, Keir Starmer was welcoming applause at an ostensibly unified Labour conference. But below the surface, a more divisive and concerning story was unfolding through a series of shocking documentaries, aired on the Al Jazeera news channel and YouTube.
The Labour Files, based on what producers say is “the biggest leak of confidential documents in British political history,” detailed harrowing bullying of party members by Labour’s bureaucracy and the rigging of democratic processes. Most chillingly, the series exposed a current of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia in the party under Starmer, at times apparently encouraged by its most senior officials.
The story told in The Labour Files begins with the party’s top officials, overwhelmingly drawn from the right of the party, being so horrified by the left taking leadership under Jeremy Corbyn that they used every trick in the book to undermine him and his supporters. But what has been uncovered isn’t just historic: Starmer’s officials, now in full control, are shown to have the same obsessive zeal for attacking their own party members. The result? The departure of nearly 100,000 hard-working Labour activists and, with them, the transformative policy programme urgently needed to tackle rampant inequality, failing public services and the climate crisis.
The programmes detail a nasty racial dimension to this ongoing project that should concern people across the political spectrum. We read the WhatsApp messages of senior officials writing that Diane Abbott “literally makes me sick” and speculating about whether her diabetes is “the bad diet one”. We hear Abbott – the first Black woman ever elected to parliament – respond that “the Labour party isn’t a safe space for Black women” and accuse the party of “colluding with this type of racism”.
The series explores the “hierarchy of racism” described in the recent Forde Report into Labour factionalism — a damning but under-reported document. Halima Khan, a former investigations officer in Labour’s governance unit, speaks of how reports of Islamophobia “would often sit in the complaints inbox,” while she would be asked to stay late to deal with antisemitism complaints. She tells of how Muslim Labour members in Newham were “stalked” by a local man who submitted a dossier detailing which school their children went to and where they parked their car. Although the dossier used racial profiling and was potentially based on a data breach, the party did not report it to the authorities, but instead suspended its branches in Newham, denying 5,000 mostly Muslim members a voice in the party.
Such stories echo the treatment of Apsana Begum, the UK’s first hijab-wearing MP, who has spoken of the sustained campaign of abuse and harassment she has faced within the party, explicitly linking this to her identity as a socialist, working-class Muslim woman. Begum has just returned to work after previously being signed off sick by her GP – but instead of offering support, the Labour Party chose to further enable the campaign to deselect her as an MP.
The Labour Files features case after case of local members being bullied by the party they dedicated their lives to. As a young member involved in the party, this comes as no surprise to me. I’ve seen first hand the demoralising impact these tactics have on people joining Labour to campaign for bold political change.
Most disappointing is that the party leadership had a golden opportunity to put a stop to such abuse with the publication in July of the Forde Report. Commissioned under Starmer himself, the report by Martin Forde QC was unexpectedly critical, decrying a “failure to prioritise a suitably robust response” to anti-Black racism and Islamophobia. Forde concluded that in Labour today “there are serious problems of discrimination” and implied the party had not held to account senior officials who, in the Corbyn period, engaged in WhatsApp group chats that revealed “deplorably factional and insensitive, and at times discriminatory, attitudes” including “expressions of visceral disgust” about Diane Abbott that drew on racist tropes.
Since the publication of the Forde Report, members feel deeply unsatisfied with the response. Many of us, particularly people of colour, feel dismissed and concerned that we are being told these accounts are historical, rather than the ongoing problem we know it to be. In response to the report, Starmer said: “I didn’t need the report to tell me we needed to take action, I’ve been taking action.” So the Forde Report’s many recommendations remain on the shelf, even as the Al Jazeera documentaries reveal the problems to be far deeper-rooted than thought. It’s no wonder Black Labour MPs have described Starmer’s response as "a kick in the teeth".
It suits the Labour leadership to ignore these issues. With the public overwhelmingly opposed to Kwasi Kwarteng’s bankers’ Budget and Liz Truss’ failed trickle down economics, Labour is enjoying a 30-point lead in the polls. Why expend time and resources on these issues? The answer is simple: racism and democracy are too important to simply be swept under the carpet – we must put our own house in order.
As a starting point, members deserve answers about the revelations in the documentary – Labour has so far given none. Those responsible for wrongdoing must be held to account, and anyone who participated in racist WhatsApp chats must face consequences. Next, the Forde Report’s recommendations must be implemented in full. The abuse of Labour’s disciplinary system to wage political battles needs to end and factionally-tainted suspensions and expulsions overturned, starting with the restoration of the whip to Jeremy Corbyn and action taken to support Apsana Begum.
More broadly, we need an end to the hierarchy of racism Forde has laid out, something which can only be achieved by implementation of Labour’s promise to create democratic BAME structures. The best bulwark against racism is democratic representation for people of colour and other minority communities. With it, perhaps we’d see full-throated opposition from Labour to the barbaric Rwanda refugee deportation plan, instead of calls for more deportations.
