In its October 2020 investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party, the Equality and Human Rights Commission required that Labour begin ‘reporting regularly on the reasons for the final outcome decisions in antisemitism complaints’.
Since March 2021, the Labour Party has published quarterly complaints statistics on its website.
Read naively, however, these reports are liable to mislead.
During Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as party leader, Labour’s disciplinary apparatus was overwhelmed by a torrent of complaints alleging antisemitism. Some cited this influx as evidence that antisemitism in the party was rife. Others argued, inter alia, that many or most complaints were likely invalid.
Labour’s disciplinary updates might appear to support the former camp. They have consistently reported that most complaints heard by the party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) concerned antisemitism and that most complaints were to a greater or lesser degree upheld.
What’s not made obvious, however, is that Labour’s published statistics account for less than one-fifth of complaints received:
- The Forde Report stated that, as of May 2021, there was a backlog of 7,090 unresolved cases, while as of March 2022, there were 554 active cases. It follows that between May 2021 and March 2022 at least 6,536 complaints were resolved. Yet Labour’s March 2022 NEC Disciplinary Statistics update accounted for at most 891 of these. That left at least 5,645 complaints from the specified period unaccounted for in Labour’s published disciplinary data—more than 85 percent of the total
- Labour’s March 2023 NEC Disciplinary Statistics update stated that less than 10 percent of cases resolved over the preceding two months had resulted in no further action. Yet an NEC member reported in July 2023 that fully 83 percent of complaints were ‘dismissed as trivial or not valid for other reasons’
What happened to that vast majority of complaints whose dismissal is not accounted for in Labour’s published data?
In November 2022, another NEC member explained that such complaints were ‘dealt with by staff’ in party headquarters without the involvement of ‘NEC panels’ because, for example, they related to ‘non-members’ or individuals who could not be identified, were ‘duplicates’, or were considered not to have ‘breach[ed]’ any ‘rule’.1
Labour has not disclosed whether antisemitism complaints have been referred to the NEC in the same proportion as other complaints.2 If this is the case, it would follow that, under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, the overwhelming majority of antisemitism complaints processed by the Labour Party have been ‘dismissed as trivial or not valid’.
1 A list of grounds for excluding a complaint from investigation may be consulted as Appendix 1 of Labour’s 2022 Complaints Policy. The Labour Party website states that complaints will in ‘general’ be investigated by staff and then referred to the NEC but caveats that staff will ‘[o]ccasionally … decide not to investigate’. In reality, complaints are overwhelmingly dismissed without investigation and only occasionally referred to the NEC.
2 When he became party leader, Starmer pledged to be ‘open and transparent’ on antisemitism. In November 2022 and again in August 2023, this writer asked the Labour Party to clarify what proportion of those complaints dismissed by staff without investigation were related to antisemitism. The Labour Party did not respond.
Jamie Stern-Weiner 