The Labour MP for Cynon Valley, Beth Winter, has put her name to a statement demanding that the party withdraw the suspension of former leader Jeremy Corbyn and reinstate him immediately. But she is one of the few and possibly only senior politicians in Welsh Labour to make the demand, highlighting the real weakness of the left in the party.
The statement, released by the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) of Labour MPs, says members must unite behind the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) recommendations and “stay and fight for his [Corbyn’s] reinstatement and for the policies for the many not the few.”
By signing the statement, Beth Winter becomes the first politician in Wales to call for Corbyn’s reinstatement, even though in her reaction earlier in the week she stopped short of making that specific demand.
Other Welsh Labour MPs have stayed silent and many have been open in their opposition to Corbyn before.
No Labour members of the Welsh Parliament have publicly backed the former leader either. Representative for Pontypridd Mick Antoniw – seen as one of the few left wing members of the Senedd – said he was remaining neutral on the issue and instead offering his services to sit on the panel looking into the suspension.
The other MS who might be expected to speak out publicly for Jeremy Corbyn is Swansea MS Mike Hedges, who had previously addressed a pro-Corbyn rally in 2016. A search of his social media, however, reveals total silence on the matter, as if it had never happened.
First Minister Mark Drakeford is also a longstanding friend and ally of Jeremy Corbyn who would regularly socialise with him at party events, but he too has kept completely quiet.
Meanwhile, Welsh Labour Grassroots, a group of left wing Labour members, has released its own statement against Corbyn’s treatment.
“In our view,” it says. “Jeremy’s statement on the EHRC report, which apparently prompted this decision, contains nothing that would justify such action. As always, he was unequivocal about the unacceptability of antisemitic views and behaviour, and about the need for Labour to rebuild trust with Jewish communities.”
But overall the response has been muted, and not just in Wales. Not even all MPs in the SCG would put their name to the fairly mild statement calling for the decision to be overturned. In the end 16 – almost half – refused to sign.
Jeremy Corbyn is arguably the most well known socialist figure in Britain today, who came close to winning power in 2017 with a manifesto promising radical wealth redistribution. This has led to many on the left to brand as shameful the decision of fellow socialists in his party not to back him.
Last night Novara Media editor Aaron Bastani reacted by saying it showed the timidity of left wing MPs and brought into question their political stamina for other fights. “If you can’t defend someone suspended without the reason being given I suspect you won’t do much to challenge the failed status quo,”
The timid response to the suspension of a man who led the party at the start of the year – and who some senior Welsh politicians including Mark Drakeford call a comrade – confirms the weakness of the left since the election defeat.
Even though many members who joined Labour to support Corbyn remain, they have little in the way of leadership or strategy. Some 6,000 joined a Momentum online rally against the suspension, while around 150 joined a similar event in Wales.
This mood for a fight back has been met with very little encouragement by the left leadership, however. John McDonnell even went out of his way to tell activists to keep calm and urged people not to leave.
It’s unclear what this will achieve. The strategy of staying in Labour to fight internal battles with the party’s right has led to a series of defeats, with the direction of travel very much with the Starmer. Corbyn was most successful against his internal opponents when the battle he fought was external and drew on support from outside of the party.
Corbyn – who led the party into two general elections and saw off a challenge from Owen Smith in 2016 – was suspended last Thursday following the release of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report into antisemitism in the party.
The report found two cases where the party had broken the Equality Act in relation to Ken Livingstone and the councillor Pam Bromley, and criticised the party’s handling of antisemitism complaints, saying there “was a lack of leadership within the Labour party on these issues, which is hard to reconcile with its stated commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.”
Immediately after the report was released, Corbyn put out a statement condemning antisemitism but saying the issue had been deliberately overstated by his opponents for political reasons.
“One antisemite is one too many,” he said, “but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.”
It is unclear under what basis in the party rules Corbyn has been suspended, and the EHRC report itself said that it was a legitimate expression of opinion to question the scale of the problem in the party.
Many people, including many Jews themselves, have questioned the way in which they say the issue has been used by people who have a long history of opposition to Cobyn’s political beliefs.
On the night of the suspension, the Jewish writer Barnaby Raine spoke on BBC’s Newsnight and condemned the way Jews had been used as a ‘battering ram’ to fight a factional battle in the Labour party.
Writing in Red Pepper, a Jewish Labour member in Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency spoke out against the way her party had been portrayed as a hotbed of antisemitism. “We have had to watch a wholly false, but soon unstoppable, invention of charges of antisemitism against our MP, with our own views as Jewish members completely ignored,” wrote Lynne Segal.
Internationally, the anti-Aparthied heroes Ronnie Kasrills, Pallo Jordan and Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim have launched a petition firmly defending Corbyn, calling his treatment an ‘utter disgrace’ and saying he had been a key figure in ending racist white rule in South Africa.
Others have disputed the media’s handling of the issue. Yesterday a lecturer in Cardiff University School of Journalism, Mike Berry, hit back at Channel 4s Fact Check after they questioned a claim he and others made that accusations of antisemitism were related to just 0.3% of Labour members. This was contrasted to polling by Survation that suggested the public had dramatically overestimated the problem, with a majority of people believing that a third of Labour members were “somehow or other under suspicion of antisemitism.”
Writing in the socialist journal Jacobin, Ed McNally said the suspension was an attack on democracy and dissent within British politics.
Previously Palestinians have also spoken out about how the issue has impacted on their ability to talk about their own oppression and treatment by the state of Israel.
Most Labour politicians in Wales seem to be largely unconcerned about much of this, however, and remain silent.
