Smears, abuse and attacks – The Traducement of Jeremy Corbyn – #SwindonOnSunday
voicebritannia.co.uk/traducement-of-corbyn-swindononsunday/Today marks the end of the 2020 summer political term; however, the term has ended the same way it did in 2019, with much of news media and Labour’s right attacking Jeremy Corbyn. In Voice Britannia’s goodbye to the term, Rachael Swindon looks back over the last few years and talks about the Traducement of Jeremy Corbyn.
A lot has been said about Jeremy Corbyn since he first announced he planned to run for the leadership of the Labour Party, back in 2015. Much of it was untrue. Quite literally made up to smear a decent and principled man.
There were many reasons the establishment didn’t want him getting anywhere near power. For example, a huge rebalancing of wealth didn’t sit well with the 150 billionaires living in the UK. A peace-first foreign policy just didn’t cut it for a country that has spent the last few centuries invading and pillaging their way across the globe.
Corbyn was a threat. Be in no doubt.
Corbyn won the Labour leadership in 2015, by a country mile. Labour MPs were plotting to remove him from the job long before he won. One Labour MP told me he would be gone by Christmas 2015.
What followed over the next 5 years isn’t well documented. The Labour Leaks report revealed just a tiny fraction of what was *really* going on. The party machinery threw everything at us. Lies, smears, sabotage – they did it all.
The party machinery discussed “hanging and burning” Corbyn, while those MPs who nominated him should be “taken out and shot.” And, apparently, “death by fire is too kind for Loto” – (Leader of the Opposition). But it was easier to call us “trots, dogs, and rabble” than reflect on their own disgusting behaviour.
I believe you will hear more about those tumultuous five years over time. The leaked report was just a taster of what was happening, day in, day out.
Now let me be clear here. I encountered 2-3 cases of blatantly intentional anti-Semitism, online, from Labour supporters. I called it out. Anti-Semitism exists, as does Islamophobia, as does what the BBC call “anti-black racism”. A denial of its existence is turning a blind eye to it. Nobody should be attacked for their faith, the colour of their skin, their sexuality, hell, they can pray to Katie Hopkins for all I care.
People will make mistakes, it’s human nature to do so. It’s how we learn from those mistakes that guide us for the future. Education is key.
Now let me be equally clear. Many vexatious, entirely false and downright malicious claims of racism were made against decent Labour Party members. Most of us know someone who has been falsely accused of one form of racism or another. While taking in to account what I have already said, the weaponisation of alleged antisemitic behaviour was rife.
Imagine being a committed campaigner against racism for the past five decades, only to be told you’re a “Fucking racist and antisemite”. Oddly enough, the same accuser said the exact opposite of Mr Corbyn just weeks before her embarrassing meltdown. Personally, I would’ve been incredibly offended, but Jeremy being Jeremy, he would take it on the chin.
Jeremy wouldn’t get in the gutter. He truly believes in ‘kinder, gentler politics’, it’s just a shame the rest of the political bubble believe in dishonest, nasty politics. Looking back, he needed to get in the gutter and tackle the smears head-on. We were making apologies for things we had no control over, and our opponents within the party saw this as a sign of weakness.
The plotters in the Labour party would regularly work hand-in-hand with the right-wing media. If I had a Pound for every “a senior Labour source told us” – that was literally made up nonsense designed to smear Mr Corbyn – I’d buy us all a personalised face-mask, diamond-encrusted.
All Labour leaders get hammered in the press, unless the leader is willing to open up the party to the establishment and the media moguls. This is no secret. And that was what so many people adored about Jeremy. He simply wasn’t for sale, and still isn’t now.
Here’s something interesting. In 2016/17, a House of Commons Home Affairs Committee found no evidence to suggest there was a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party.
So what happened in 2017 that suddenly changed things?
We gave the establishment one hell of a fright during the 2017 General Election campaign. Our ability to mobilise thousands of people at a moments notice was unique, they hadn’t seen anything like it before. And we came close. Just a handful of votes across a number of constituencies was the difference between winning and losing.
And this was down to one man and his vision. A vision of a better, more equal society, for the many, not the few.
The Labour Leaks revealed what a staggering achievement it was, considering we had the full weight of the media, the Tory smear machine, the ultra/remain FBPE, and most of a hostile Parliamentary Labour Party to contend with.
There was no way they were ever going to let us get that close again. Corbyn and the movement put the fear of God into them. They got a peek behind the iron curtain of neoliberalism – it threatened everything they stand for.
Higher taxes on the highest earners? Communist!
Dialogue before dropping bombs?
National Security risk.
The recognition of the Palestinian state?
Antisemite.
I could link all sorts of smears to this article, telling you Jeremy Corbyn will tax your garden, sell your grannies house, replace the BBC with Iranian Press TV, supported the IRA, blah blah blah. But I’m not giving bullshit the luxury of oxygen.
So we know what happened over the last 5 years. We know what happened in 2015, when they planned to remove Corbyn by Christmas. We know what happened in 2016, when the PLP did a staged and timed mass resignation, including Keir Starmer, whose resignation letter read like a child trying to write their own absence note, to cover the time they’ve been playing truant. Utterly pathetic, and the best they could muster up was an ice cream pusher like Owen Smith.
2017 was peaceful for a while. But the same plotters kept plotting, lead by the man that promised to serve Jeremy faithfully as his newly-elected deputy leader.
The following 2 years were brutal. Jeremy was taking punch after punch, but not throwing any back. His incredible team, including chief of staff, Karie Murphy, formed a ring of fire around him. They fought day and night to defend Jeremy and the whole movement. The things I’ve read about some of his staff have been hideous, and entirely untrue.
Do not believe everything you read in the papers.
One accusation levelled at Jeremy was his inability to deal with allegations of antisemitism. Here’s how it worked: complaints would receive allegations of antisemitism. Labour staff, aligned to anti-Corbyn factions would then forward the complaint to Jeremy, ‘seeking advice’. Jeremy would advise, and there you have it – the perfect allegation of interference. We could talk about them intentionally sitting on a vast number of complaints – to give the impression Jeremy wasn’t dealing with them. This includes allegations sent in by left-wing members being sat on. I think it is also important to mention Jeremy Corbyn himself voiced concerns of antisemitism allegations being ignored and mislaid.
Jeremy Corbyn, Jennie Formby and Karie Murphy tried, believe me, they really tried.
Rest in Link.