Alexei Sayle: Hello everybody.
Uh, welcome to the 30th edition of the Electrical podcast.
Uh, I'm abroad at the moment, which is why I'm using the built
in microphone on the my computer.
So it might sound, not sound as perfect as, uh, usually does.
I'm also recording this on a momentous day when, um, uh, there's trust has
just resigned a few minutes ago, but also, uh, the first episode of, uh,
like sales imaginary mage past Season four goes out this evening and it's a
fucking nuisance that she's resigned.
Cause there are a.
, Uh, do you talk about her?
Uh, yeah, there's a couple of references.
Yeah.
And I dunno what we're gonna, not in this episode actually, luckily, but, uh,
we may either have to, either Viji is gonna have to make a statement saying,
This show was recorded several weeks ago.
Or we're gonna have to try and do, uh, an edit ready.
Sure.
Um, but it's, uh, it's, it's, it's me who suffers.
It's me who suffers most from Liz Truss.
Well, she'll still technically
Talal Karkouti: be Prime Minister for the next seven days,
Alexei Sayle: right?
Yeah.
It's not this episode and next episode, she'll still be the Prime Minister.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, I'll, I'll speak to chair of my producers, see what we can do.
It's a shame really, cuz we had one brilliant laugh about.
And, um, I don't see that we can keep it in there, but anyway, we will see.
But, uh, first of all, I would like to, we have got this, this episode is an
interview mostly with Richard Sanders, who, who produced and part directed the
Al Jazeera series, uh, the Labor Files, which is all about the second episode.
He directed the episode, I think he produced the whole series.
He directed the second episode, which is all about what we love most, which is
internal shenanigans, within the Labor Party and, uh, the, uh, right wings.
Um, Pity Pty Pity Dity , uh, in, its in all its various, um, forms.
So I will, I will let the, I will let the program, I'll let the, you know,
I'll let the show, uh, talk about that.
Uh, just, uh, also just to, I wanted to amplify slightly on, um, an idea
raised in the, the previous, the Sugar Foot, uh, podcast, uh, about this idea
about, uh, well, to recap, really, I've, well, there's several things.
I've always had this idea that I've always, one of the things I've
always admired about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it has no, it
has no policies about anything.
And also that, um, it's, um, the people who appointed to leadership
roles, they don't really have any power in their, their, they're chains.
But I always, I could never see a way that, um, you could apply
that to conventional politics.
And then, but now I've come up with this idea about, I think
what I'm gonna do is call it.
Uh, vote for nobody.
That's my part.
This is the party I'm proposed called Vote for Nobody.
It's based on the idea that the, um, the largest party in any election
is so, so say there's a 65%, 70% turnout, and then the winning party
gets 30% or 35% of that turnout.
But nevertheless, the largest constitu, actually my math might be slightly
shock here, but the large constituents is actually people who don't vote.
So what I'm gonna try and what I would, I'm proposing is that we, we, uh, we
activate the non-voting, uh, constituency.
We say.
So the, the logo, I think is a black outline of a.
Either male nor female in a, in an entire body suit.
And, uh, we, we go, we, so we propose, we, And that's the logo.
It's just this black and it be like a dotted, a dotted outline to kind of No,
no, I think it should just be that, like a person in a black body suit, basically.
But just a black.
Okay.
And we say to people, vote for nobody, rather than wasting your vote by not
voting, use to send a real protest by voting for, vote for, for nobody.
So we vote for nobody.
I, I, I don't, And I, you know, at the moment, we have no policies.
You can vote for us.
If you write wing, you can vote for us.
If you left wing, it just means that you're disillusioned
with the political system.
And it might be be, I think that nobody might take their seat in the
house comments and just sit there in their, in their black body suit all day
saying nothing . Which, uh oh, no, no.
The, the idea is that you put a random object in their seat.
Yeah.
I've, I've changed, I've changed that.
I've changed that.
Oh, it's nobody, No, nobody sits there now.
. Okay.
If we win, will you just leave the seat empty?
Well, no, or nobody.
The, the person in the black body suit sits in that seat.
Oh, everyone has to wear one of those suits.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
. Okay.
I If we, so if we, Yeah, they'd turn up on their first day in a, in a
black body suit and just sit there.
Yeah.
All day, every day.
Okay.
Cuz it needs to, there needs to be a visual aspect to, Cause I, what
I like about the random objects is that on the broadcast of the
commons meetings, they'll, Yeah.
You'll see like a lampshade or a, you know, a Yeah.
I don't think you get away with that really, but act good.
Yeah.
You have to actually show up as a person, but there's no rules on what you can wear.
Right.
Yeah.
So much far.
So No, no.
The the body suit that also covers your head and face.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you just like a silhouette of a per.
Okay.
Love it.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's the idea.
I'm just putting that out there.
I'm gonna work on it.
This is, this is what I feel, you know, I, I've not, you know, filled in all the gaps
yet, but, um, uh, this is what I feel.
This is what my entire life has been leading towards.
But now that it comes to the point where, I mean, it, the, the, we come
to the problem where, like, encouraging people who don't vote to actually
go out and vote, but vote for this
Richard Sanders: party.
Cause there are, yeah, there have been like protest parties
Alexei Sayle: that you can vote for, you know, Monster Raven
Looney or Council, but people still don't show up to vote for them.
So how, No, no, You'd have to know what you, our activists, our
activists would've to go out into the community, into the non-voting
community and urge them to vote.
Tell them, you know, say, Look, you know, this is a really
subversive thing you could do.
Maybe lay on mini buses.
Uh, if our, you know, if our crowd funding goes well lay on mini
bosses to take people to the polls.
I just point out to them that this is a way you, the reason they don't vote
is because they feel disenfranchised.
Yeah.
And they feel, I suppose if you vote, you know, a politician gets in,
which is true, some ambitious, um, deceitful person by large will get in.
But this, uh, you know, if you use or vote to not vote as it were, then
um, you know, nobody will get in.
And it's, it won't be an ambitious, deceitful politician.
It will be, you know, your protest.
And, and through that outreach you could get see people engaged in politics,
you know, they may then Oh, love it.
We might run, Yeah, we might run soup.
You know, we might run soup kitchens on the side or gardening.
That's great.
And listeners at home let us know what you think about nobody.
Yeah.
Uh, in the emails, Alexa el
Richard Sanders: podcast gmail.com
Alexei Sayle: or tweet us at Alexa podd.
Instagram is the same.
Uh, message us on Paton.
Um, donate to our paton
Richard Sanders: pat.com/alexa podcast.
Um, and, and something else we talked about
Alexei Sayle: on the last episode was cowboys and Right.
Often, often, while we record interviews, I'll be like Googling
things that you talk about that I'm
Richard Sanders: not familiar with.
Mm-hmm.
, um, during
Alexei Sayle: this coming up interview with Richard Sanders,
uh, which was recorded with proper microphones, by the way.
Sorry about the sound quality of the intro.
Um, but yeah.
Uh, during this interview with Richard, you, uh, John, we, who made the panorama
Richard Sanders: of mm-hmm.
, uh, antisemitism in labor life mm-hmm.
, and I wanted to quickly just remind myself
Alexei Sayle: what his Facebook looked like, and I Googled him and
it was what, uh, the top result I got was, was actually a legendary black
Richard Sanders: cowboy.
Alexei Sayle: From, uh, Canada called John we, who was one of the first
black people ever in Calgary and is quite a legendary, um, individual.
And he had, um, you know, he could like stop a charging cow
head on and wrestle it to the
Richard Sanders: ground.
Alexei Sayle: He was a master horseman.
Um, he was born a slave and then when slavery was abolished in America,
he went up and helped herd thousands of cows up to Canada and became
one of the first cowboys in Canada.
And, um, I thought it was a, a bit of serendipity that John
Wean Cowboys came together.
Yeah.
He didn't direct the panorama.
Is labor antisemitic though?
? He certainly didn't.
No, but I wish he had.
No, but that's, Yeah, they, Oh, you, you completely broke up there.
Your, your signal.
. Richard Sanders: Uh, but, um, I think that's the fate telling
us maybe to get on with the
Alexei Sayle: interview.
What, what do you think?
All right.
So anyway, let's jump in.
May, uh, Alex sale, a younger Alex sale, a pre uh, pre-lit trust, chaos
departure, Lexi Sale, and Richard Sanders.
Hello everybody.
Welcome to, uh, The podcast with Richard Sanders, who is directed
one episode and was executive producer of the other two episodes.
Why not?
Richard Sanders: Executive producer?
I, I, I made the second in the three part series for Labor
Alexei Sayle: Files.
Oh, the Labor Files for Al Jazeera, which all the left, our entire demographic
is absolutely, uh, crazy about Yeah.
Them and no one else.
. Yeah.
But I, I think we can talk about, We first met when you got in touch with me because
you were, and this is where we have to be.
We are going to talk about the panorama.
Documentary, Um, is Labor antisemitic, directed by and produced by John?
We was the he John We was the reporter.
Yeah.
Was the reporter.
Yeah.
Um, John, we is extremely litigious.
Um, I think I can say he looks like a prick without him.
With that glass is halfway down the nose, fucking look, and the
kind of, he looks like a rattled old kind of fifties cinema idol.
And also you can clearly see that this man thinks he is fucking all that.
I mean, this is a man who loves himself to a great degree anyway, but we have to
be careful, uh, about , about what we say about him, about what we say about him.
Nevertheless, uh, I don't think that bit is actionable saying
somebody looks like a pr.
Um, but we met when you originally would think wanted to, when it first came out.
You want you.
Appalled at the nature of it, I think we can say.
And you initially wanted to make a thing with, with, with the wrong kind of
Jews, which was basically boiled down to me, Mi Margolis and, uh, Michael Rose.
Well, that's, that's right.
Richard Sanders: It was a quite brilliant idea I had, if I
might, if I might say so myself.
I mean, it wasn't particularly in response to the panorama, although it was about
that time you and I met, wasn't it?
It was certainly pre, pre covid.
Um, and the idea at that time was to have a three headed program yourself,
Maria Margas and, and Michael Rosen.
Um, just, just presenting an alternative perspective and, and on,
on the labor antisemitism crisis and general musings on your own Jewishness
and your, how you related to your Jewishness, et cetera, et cetera.
Which I still think would've been a wonderful film, but
I couldn't get anyone else
Alexei Sayle: interested on it.
So, No.
Well, that's, um, you know, I mean one of the things I think we see in this,
in those the Al Jazeera films is the.
Totality, the one-sided nature of the smear campaign against Corbin
that you, that you could say, you could say Corbin was an antisemite,
or the labor party was institutional anti, with no blow back whatsoever.
To say that the, to say the truth, which is the Corbin wasn't NTC might,
and the Labor party was not infested with antisemitism, uh, you know, came
at a great risk, I think, didn't it?
You know?
Yeah.
Richard Sanders: Um, my own motivation was various, you know, I'm not a
Cobin Knight, um, but I did feel that a lot of the coverage at that time,
particularly around the antisemitism issue, was just very, obviously very bad.
Journalism.
Mm-hmm.
And to, to a degree I felt there was sort of market opening, actually Right.
Properly reporting all this stuff.
So, um, although I never got that original documentary made, Peter over o and myself
have written various things, Some open democracy, more for Middle East Eye.
No one else seemed to be interested in it.
But there, you know, there was an interesting opening just, just doing
proper journalism on this stuff.
Particularly in the wake of when the leaked report came out and
then the e HRC report came out.
Just a lot of the journalism around this was just really
Alexei Sayle: dreadful terms.
Yeah.
I think that that's what, first of all, I have to say, I should put in
an then come in for the BBC in my own experience that the BC's been notten,
but fantastic for me and also, Uh, Radio four have been amazingly supportive.
So I have to, I have to put that into, hang onto my, which cuz it's true.
You know, So the BBC is not, I, I know we're not exclusively talking about
the bbc, you know, it's, and, but it's not a monolithic organization.
But there is nevertheless a, a tremendous problem with dare reporting
of, you know, the whole antisemitism in inverted communis crisis.
And with the rest of the press, really, it seems to me that
we have gone through some.
Well, I know you talk, I mean, as far as you talk about, we, we seem to have
gone through some kind of mirror, you know, into a, into an alter altern
universe really, where suddenly, um, proper, responsible, judicious report,
diligent reporting went out the window and they can't really get it accurately.
I dunno.
I, I mean
Richard Sanders: No, that, that's right.
I think, you know, there were a lot of powerful vested interests that had it
in for Jeremy Corbin and, and really wanted to undermine Jeremy Corbin.
And, uh, they all lighted eventually on the antisemitism thing as,
as the, the perfect weapon and, and it is the perfect weapon.
Uh, firstly, , you know, who wants to be on the wrong side of, of the antisemitism?
Yeah.
Debate, you know, the history of antisemitism and the experience of
Jewish people in Europe and so on.
These are so horrific that it, it's a charge that
obviously has enormous potency.
Mm-hmm.
and, and I think as well, I think it's important to be fair here, it had enormous
potency cuz I think most of the people, most of the time who are most invested.
Genuinely believed it.
You know, my, my experience of people who might be called liberal Zionist
is that they genuinely do believe that people who are firmly anti
Zionist are at the very least suspect.
Really?
Yeah.
No, I, I think, uh, you know, I think there were certain people at certain times
who were probably being pretty cynical.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, but I think a lot of the people, a lot of the time gen genuinely believe it.
They, they, they find it hard, You know, even people who themselves may be quite
critical of, you know, certain aspects of the behavior of the Israeli state find
it very hard to relate to a fundamental critique of Zionism in any way.
Other than that, it in some way reflects people's attitude more broadly to
Jews, and I think they're quite sincere
Alexei Sayle: in that really even.
Uh, to make the obvious point, a lot of those people who are
voicing those criticisms are themselves Jewish, aren't they?
Yes.
I
Richard Sanders: mean, I think that was one of the Well, and, and I think
that's possibly why tho those, those, those procor in Jews find themselves
the, the subject of the most ferocious criticism, cuz it does rather
undermine things and they have to be portrayed as a sort of lunatic fringe.
Yeah.
Which it was very unfair for people like Naomi when born DRIs
and Jenny Ma, the Manson, who are, you know, elderly Jewish ladies.
Yeah.
You know, You know, in no way are they sort of Lou left and you, Professor
Aish sch Slim Jeffrey by, from a sch
Alexei Sayle: saved in the
Richard Sanders: Israeli army for Byman QC is Ludi Christ.
To portray these people are some sort of lunatic fringe.
Yeah.
And they're just people who, Jews who are not Zionist.
Yeah.
Or, or, or, or Jews who, I mean, you know, Jeffrey Byman would probably certainly
say that he's not anti Zionist, but certainly Jews were not pro Zionist.
Alexei Sayle: Yeah.
And I, like you say, I think that that is, um, that goes some way to
explain the ferocious attack within the labor body and outside the labor
body on those anti Zionist, uh, Jews.
Yeah.
Because it, it, it, it undercuts the whole Russian,
Richard Sanders: all of that.
And you have that ludicrous statistic, which Jenny Manson articulates in
our film that, you know, their, their own calculation is that Jews
are 6.3 times more likely to be investigated for antisemitism by
the Labor party than non-Jews.
Yeah.
Which, which really ought to set an enormous alarm bell ringing.
Yeah.
. It doesn't,
Alexei Sayle: apparently it's extraordinary.
I mean, I, I mean, the extent to which, I mean, if you can describe a
kind of nuty as being massive, the, the, the massive way in which those
programs have been ignored is, I mean, in its own way telling, isn't it?
It, it is.
I
Richard Sanders: mean, I think why this is there, there's various reasons.
Um, I think we were very unlucky in that we'd aimed to coincide with the
late party conference and then the, the, the conservative government imploded
in this astonishing and bizarre way.
The late party conference, in its own terms, became a
sort of triumphal procession.
Mm-hmm.
, uh, the spirit, the whiff of 97 is in the air and, and so on.
No one really wanted.
We, we, we weren't sort of tapping into the Zeit guys at all.
No one really wanted to rake over the colds of, of the co years and so on.
And so in part I get that mm-hmm.
, and, you know, in part I don't think it is necessarily a conspiracy of some, What I
do find extraordinary is, is the panorama.
Now with the, with with John W's Panorama, we're making
four very concrete allegations.
It's not some sort of scatter gun, Oh, it's a horrible right
wing program or something.
It's four very specific allegations, and I think anyone watching it would think,
a, they're quite serious allegations.
Mm-hmm.
, you know, apparent inaccuracy.
Mm-hmm.
and, and B, they, they seem to be pretty well evidenced.
Now, if the BBC is able to turn around and say to me, No, no, you've got it wrong
for this, this and this reason, I'll, I'll hold my hands up and that's fine.
Mm-hmm.
. But I think for the bbc, simply not to engage, to simply put out a blanket.
We stand by our journalism and then just to keep quiet.
Mm.
No one talks about, it seems to me, Yeah.
Entirely unacceptable in in the national broadcaster.
Alexei Sayle: Yeah.
And it's also that if John, given that John, we is so eager to resort to the
courts, if, if your allegations weren't true, you'd think he would, he'd unleash.
Mark Lewis of Patrick and Law would be round your house in a second.
Really?
And the fact that they haven't, um, lashed out in that way, in least
their dogs of law, kind of implies that, uh, that their only tactic
really is to ignore your accusations.
Yes.
I mean, I,
Richard Sanders: you know, I don't know, maybe you should get John we on and
ask him, , in the past when Peter and I have written about this and when Navara.
I've written about this, He has written enormously lengthy replies.
I mean, people who wanna see John Weir's point of view can look at that.
We, we, in open democracy, printed the entirety of his response.
Mm-hmm.
, uh, he, I think in the Jewish Chronicle, wrote an enormously lengthy
response to a Novara media piece.
So, you know, John Weir's views are out there.
If you wanna go, go and look at them.
Um, I, I, my personal feeling is they don't provide sufficient
explanation for the apparent inaccuracies we're presenting.
There is, of course, a legal case looming Yes.
Patty French, at the beginning of November.
It's possible.
John Weir feels he needs to remain quiet ahead of that.
I don't know.
Mm-hmm.
, So I, you know, all I can observe is that the BBC and, and John Muir
are determinedly saying nothing.
Yeah.
And, and as a result, Um, no one else is saying anything.
I mean, it was interesting.
The only people really to fire back at my program was Stellar
Creasy and her partner Dan Fox.
Right.
Who were immediately deluged beneath a, a torrent of people saying, Well, hang on.
You know, the, the evidence in the film speaks for itself.
So their experience perhaps shows the wisdom of other
people's not saying anything.
I mean, I personally, I take it as a compliment to the
journalism at the moment mm-hmm.
that people clearly don't feel able, um, or don't feel that they
want to engage in public debate.
The strategy appears to be stand stands that I don't blink,
and maybe they'll go away.
Right.
I know.
The depressing thing is, is, you know, I'm very grateful to be here and I'm very
on Palestine deep dive, but I mean, be on
Alexei Sayle: the morning.
The one show I'd love to be on the today, Greg.
Yeah.
Graham Norton.
Yeah.
Where, where you should be Really.
But it's not happening at the moment.
No.
And that just, I mean, maybe we should just, I mean, In greater detail.
Let's go into, well, I dunno, go into your history, I suppose would be fair of all.
Where, what led you to this point?
I think in general, this career ending
Richard Sanders: point, I think, well, as I say in part
it was a sort of market opening.
No one else was gonna report this properly, so I thought
I might as well, you know.
Has that been a good move?
Well, well find out.
I mean, I've always had, you know, I've been working as a TV producer
for 25 years and I've always gone straight from one film to another.
And here I am having finished that one sitting here.
So we'll see.
Maybe I'll never work again.
I hope, I hope that's not the case.
Um, we'll, we'll see.
But there were partly, I'm, I'm always drawn to what's difficult and this
is an immensely difficult subject.
On one level, it's one, people seem to find it emotionally and
intellectually very difficult.
I did feel that the journalism was appalling, but also I had a very
strong sense, I'd rather Carmi, the Palestinian writer asked me
this the first time I met her.
You know, why do you care?
And, and I, I think the truth is, it seems to me very obvious that if you are
continuously appropriating to yourself the right to say, ah, they may talk about
Israel and Zionism, but they mean Jews.
Mm-hmm.
. Now if you, if you are unquestioned, appropriating that right to yourself,
where does that leave Palestinians?
Yeah.
If every time they articulate their struggle, they're told, ah, you might say
that, but you mean some, something else.
Mm-hmm.
and it, and it seems to me the entire narrative, very obviously a served to
shield what all of the was human rights organizations agree as an apartheid state.
It did, it, it very clearly served to provide a shield from criticism.
It also clearly undermined and disempowered Palestinians.
And in fact, more than that demonized Palestinians.
The minute you, you would, you would inflict the.
Of antisemitism on people, you know, which has such dreadful resonance mm-hmm.
in European history.
You have, you, you, you've, you've undermined them in a very fundamental
way and certainly opened the door to de de demonization and dehumanization.
And that's what I felt, uh, it was, um, it, it, yeah, it was the,
the impact on Palestinians of all this that really motivated me.
Alexei Sayle: And I mean, I always think there is a broader kind of
agenda as well, because anybody who is a socialist will be by, you know,
by and large will be pro Palestinian.
And therefore it not only subverts, you know, the Palestinian course, but also
sub, I mean, it's been used tove the entire course of socialism, wasn't it
Richard Sanders: really?
Ever.
Yes.
I mean, I cared less about that.
Yeah.
I, you know, the labor is its own business.
I mean, it seems to me the fundamental undermining.
of an entire people, um, was something that sort of
exercised me more emotionally.
But I think you're absolutely right.
And, and I think going forward, this is something the left has
to confront because this is, you know, it's been battle tested now.
Yeah.
And, and it is the perfect way anyone going forward is
likely to be, um, a champion.
Anyone genuinely radical is likely to be a champion of Palestinian human rights.
Mm-hmm.
and a critic, not just of Israel, but you know, the broader concept designers.
Mm-hmm.
and they can now always be destroyed.
Yeah.
Using this and the left has to think quite ha carefully about how.
It addresses this in future, I mean, I'd point you towards something
that you can get it online.
The, the hostings, the leadership hostings of the Jewish Labor Movement shared by
Robert Paston, um, in whatever January, 2020, where Paston presents the argument
that the very act of arguing for a free speech caveat by Corbin in, in September,
2018 when the Labor Party adopted the h i HRA definition of antisemitism,
the very act of suggesting you needed a caveat to protect free, free speech.
He argues that in itself is antisemitic and should have led to what he
calls a reckoning at that time.
And he gets really quite worked up about it.
Right.
It's pretty, it's, it's, you, you should, you should watch it.
Yeah.
Very revealing.
And at one point, Rebecca Long Bailey just attempts to say, Well, I, you know,
I can't exactly remember the wording, and she is howled down by the audience now.
It shows the corner that the left had allowed itself to be backed into Yes.
By that time.
And I think it ought to be required viewing for anyone who cares about
Palestinian human rights because they, they had allow, allowed themselves to be
backed into a corner where they simply couldn't open their mouths at all.
Yes, Yes.
And I, I think Huda amor the young pale new woman's comments on those minutes
of the meeting between Steve Reed and the Board of Deputies and the, um,
and other, um, Jewish communal groups.
It comes at the end of our film where, and I think Huda
is very articulate about this.
She points out that it shows the, the, the immediate light.
of the, the, the fight against antisemitism with
combating the policy of bds.
Mm-hmm.
. Yes.
And, and, and, and, and, and it shows.
She says it's quite shocking to see the two things so crudely
and obviously wedded together.
Alexei Sayle: Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
I mean, I do think that the, um, we've talked about this
a bit on the podcast app.
The left Jeremy Co made a terrible mistake in not fighting back against
these accusations much earlier.
And I think, again, I, I always sort of blame McDonald.
I think there was an element that, I mean that, that the thought, if we make
one more apology, if we just apologize that this will draw a line on, of
course, not understanding that these people are board deputies, et cetera.
Jewish labor movements are bullies who will never, uh, accept an apology.
Richard Sanders: I mean, what I think people will often say to
you is, why didn't he state it?
You know, his opposition to antisemitism and his condemnation of anti sem and.
Antisemitism clearly and firmly, which is why at the beginning of the
film we have, I think it's about a three minute section where he just
does it again and again and again.
Yeah.
And again, I, I think my own view is that the Corbin was confronted with two issues,
but I'm not sure any labor leader could have dealt with woman Brexit flexed, where
he has the, the conundrum of a party where 80, 80% of people who remain and 70% of
the constituencies had voted to, to leave.
I'm not sure if any labor leader could have squared that circle.
No.
And the anti-Semitism thing, and you know, I've talked to various people actually in
the last few days about this, and I think this is certainly a debate that needs to
happen within the left, but it seems to me there are one of two things you can do.
You can either.
Stand up and say, Well, no, sorry, it's an apartheid state
and therefore from an anti-racist perspective, I'm going to condemn it.
Mm-hmm.
and I'm gonna very firmly condemn it.
And if you are going to attack me from an anti-racist perspective, your
evidence needs to be really good.
Yeah.
And I'm not gonna be knocked off course here.
Yeah.
Um, that's one position to take.
If you're not going to do that, you probably have to go all the way to
the other extreme and do what Stama did and, and make your speech in front
of the labor friends of Israel and basically accept their, their agenda.
Yeah.
But then, but it needs to be one or the other.
Yeah.
And it seems to me.
That Jeremy, if, if you're not gonna do one or the other of them, you are
endlessly twisting in the wind in between.
Now, there are, you know, people I've spoke with within the last few days
who disagree with that and think there was a middle course you could take.
I'm not sure what that middle course was.
I
Alexei Sayle: I don't think there was a middle course.
I agree with you.
I mean, I think that it's, you know, it's, it's, yes, it's one or the other.
Well, and if you care about, you know, anti-colonialism, imperialism, Right.
But I, I think the first, you
Richard Sanders: take option one, but, but option one, I suspect.
Uh, Jeremy and people around him were right in calculating think is
simply impossible to articulate in the British sort of media climate.
Mm.
Yeah.
You simply, you know, standing up and saying, I'm sorry, it's a racist,
ethno state who's defining features that it's structured to ensure the
domination of one ethnicity over another.
I just don't think you're allowed to do that.
I'll probably get in trouble cause I've just done it.
Yeah.
Um, you're simply not allowed to do that in, in Britain, even though that is the
position of all the world's leading Yes.
Human rights organizations, including BET Cellar, which is Israeli.
Alexei Sayle: Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's, I mean, yeah, in a way I suppose it's, I, I know.
When you're in the middle of something, the way Jeremy was, you
know, when you're, you know, being attacked from so many sides, it's,
it's very hard to think straight.
I think.
I mean, I've, I mean, as a pro Palestinian activist, I have noticed this, the
idea of the new antisemitism starting around about 2000 when they started sort
of beta testing it, you know, trying it out, you know, didn't quite work.
Getting pushed back, coming back again and again until it grew the I H R A definition
and all that shit, you know, I mean, until you know, it, finally, it, it blossom.
Richard Sanders: Well, it gets turbocharged after 2016 because
it's the person weapon to.
Cor now, you know, I think the Israel lobby is very powerful.
It's is, but it ain't that powerful.
And, and the reason it gets turbocharged after 2016 is cuz all sorts of other
groups are suddenly also have a vested interest in, in destroying Jeremy Corbin.
Mm-hmm.
and various groups who don't give a damn about, um, there's
elements on the labor, Right.
For example, I don't think, give a damn about Israel and or
antisemitism for that matter.
But they, they, they worked out, they had the perfect weapon here.
Yeah.
And it was a weapon that disempowered parole Jeremy, because there, there is
a man whose entire life had been about anti-racism and it sort of disarmed him.
I, I just don't think he, it just left him floundering.
Yeah.
I think it
Alexei Sayle: must have been on a personal level, he must have been,
it must have been terribly confusing.
Really.
I think he found it very difficult personally.
Yeah.
I mean, I always think that like 40 years, 50 years of campaigning against
anti-racism, Compared to like giving back to like mural that might or might
not have had some dodgy stuff in it.
You know?
I mean, so you take 40 years an entire life, expensive and anti-racism or
tweeting support for a mural, you know, hadn't looked, hadn't looked properly.
Yeah.
The extraordinary I impact maybe then, I mean, we could go onto the other, I
mean, leave from behind that, um, the whole antisemitism, uh, smear and um,
just go onto the other stuff within the Labor Party, I suppose that, that, that,
that, that the, um, those series of films reveal or, uh, uh, just the, well again,
I suppose it's the, it's the com it's those, the degree to which, uh, Elements
within the Labor Party hierarchy conspired against democratically elected leader
Richard Sanders: of the Labor Party.
That's right.
Film one is about general skullduggery, um, by the labor right against, against
the left, particularly in Liverpool.
Um, from three is about racism, uh, and the hierarchy of racism.
Of course while we were making this series, the Ford Report came out, which,
you know, even if you don't wanna listen to Al Jazeera, read the Ford Report.
Yeah.
Now the Ford report is couched in very cautious language and it does
a bit of both sides as someone blah, blah, blah, you know, in large measure
vindicates a lot of what we're saying.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
If you read it carefully and read it properly, I, It's a
fascinating, rather surprising.
Alexei Sayle: Yeah.
I mean, I was, I was all expecting that it would be a complete whitewash
and while there are things I disagree in it, there it is, is a long way from
Richard Sanders: whitewash.
I mean, you get, get towards the end of it and you look at the
stuff about antisemitism training.
Yeah.
Where he starts calling for a, a broader approach and for Jewish voice, for labor.
Uh, you know, for it not just to be left of the Jewish Labor movement,
but for, for Jewish voice, for labor, which supported Cobin to be involved
in that antisemitism training.
I mean, it's, it's pretty radical what he's suggesting.
And, and which you can see from the
Alexei Sayle: pushback.
Yeah.
The, I mean the Jewish Chronicle went nuts,
Richard Sanders: which is interesting because everyone
else just kept quiet about it.
The labor just kept quiet about that fraud report, rather they, as they
have about our series, Cause they, but if we quick keep quiet, no one
will know that's what he is written.
And, and again, that was the sensible approach.
I thought it was rather rather unwise of the Jewish, chronic and
other people to really push back.
Cause I don't think anyone would've noticed those bits at the end of
the report if they hadn't jumped up and down and said, This is entirely.
Yeah.
And of course John Weir's response to our program was to say, I,
I disagree with the Ford Report
, Alexei Sayle: even though that was commissioned by Starer and you
know, is meticulously researched.
Yeah.
I mean,
Richard Sanders: it took and didn't see the light of day for two and a half years.
And as journalistically, I'm still beavering away here.
I'd love to know the inside story of why.
The Ford report didn't come out for two years and the four
four panelists are being very professional and tight lipped and, uh,
Alexei Sayle: I'd left a you can guess, can't you, which is to stake
the, you know, if it had come out when it was completed, it would've
had much more power than it doesn't
Richard Sanders: Yeah.
Yes.
I mean, they managed to, as it was, it was released on the harshest day in history
and, and of other things were going on.
It's got pretty much ignored, but it's an interesting read the Ford Report.
Yeah.
You, you sort of sense that Martin Ford got it.
He understood what, and to a large, you know, what he, he was
commissioned to look at the leaked report, which was the Labor Party's
own study during the Corman era into.
Antisemitism, which is also a fascinating report.
I mean, for any historian, proper historians or journalists out
there, if you really want to understand the labor antisemitism
crisis, read the leaked report.
Cause although it doesn't question some of the fundamentals as a portrait
of the internal workings of a, of a party, it's without precedent.
I mean, if, in fact, I think rather took by surprise in the closing
days of, of Corbin's leadership, the people it was presented to
Jenny form being Kerry Murphy.
I don't, I don't think they'd expected someone to, to carry
out such an incredibly detailed, obsessively detailed study.
And there's a remarkable document that leaked
Alexei Sayle: and labor, the, the, um, the Labor Party under starer.
Their response was rather than, um, you know, examining these, the
examples of incredible racism and from Emil El know, and, uh, you
know, Ian Mc, you know, the former.
Leaders of the paid people who are being paid to support Jeremy
Coman rather than, uh, you know, examining that day of legally
attacked the people they think leaked
Richard Sanders: it.
Well, there's two things they do.
One is they commission the Ford Report to look into the leak report.
Yeah.
Which then doesn't report two and a half years.
And then when it reports it's buried as well.
Mm-hmm.
. But the other thing is, yes, they, so the Labor Party is being
pursued by two groups, um, for.
The revelations for data protection violations.
Okay.
It's having to spend enormous amounts of money, uh, defending itself.
And it's taken out what's called a Section 20 where it seeks to recover its, um,
costs from the people it claims, although it doesn't seem to have any evidence
of this, it claims leaked the report.
Yeah.
Who also coincidentally are the people who wrote the report.
Right.
Okay.
Yes.
And you know, there are three young people who the Labor Party is effectively
seeking to do, destroy their lives, to bankrupt them, and certainly one of
them has no money whatsoever, you know?
Um, and it's very hard not to feel that they are being
punished for having written.
The
Alexei Sayle: report for those of us, there's those of our listers
not embedded in labor shenanigans.
Can you just tell Al Ask what was the leak
Richard Sanders: report?
Yeah.
I mean, you have to, you have to become an expert in the endless
reports and I have become, and it's really, Let me walk you through them.
First of all, you get the Alies, uh, and human hang on, eh, hrc.
The Qualities and Human Rights Commission, the Statutory Qualities and Human Rights
Commission, which is the successor, which are the Commission for Racial Equality,
uh, which used to deal with race.
They then throw in all sorts of other inequalities, gay rights,
and women's rights, and bl them all together in this single organization.
They, in the spring of 2019, announced they were gonna investigate
the aid party for anti sem.
And, and, and dip is extraordinarily intrusive in what
it's demanding from the party.
Um, you know, what wants all sorts of information?
Well, no, at one time is demanding people's private emails and so on,
which given the outrage about the supposed data violations of the
later LE report is, is interesting.
I mean, they wanted, they wanted access to, to, to records that the party
pointed out it, it had no access to it.
Don't get people's private emails, their private WhatsApp chats and and so on.
Anyway, in preparation for this, the party itself starts producing its own sort of
submission and it's handed to these young, extremely efficient young party staffers
who start to do it quite obsessively.
And in doing so for the first time, really starts to uncover what appears to have
been, according to the leaked report, the, the ine ineffectiveness of the.
Party bureaucracy prior to April, 2018 in tackling antisemitism and other things.
It's a, for your listeners, it's a really simple, fundamental point to understand,
which no one in the media in Britain ever points out until April, 2018.
Jeremy Corbin has no control of the bureaucracy of the Labor Party,
and it is the bureaucracy of the no party, specifically the dispute
department within the governance and legal unit, which is responsible for
investigating antisemitism complaints.
And Jeremy Corbin has no control over this.
In fact, the labor bureaucracy is, uh, controlled by the right, by
the precisely the people who will then be his most ferocious critics.
Uh, and you, you can see quite clearly that what happens is the moment he
brings in Jenny Formby to be General Secretary, what actually happens is
far from using that power to cover up.
Antisemitism, whatever suspensions, notar, investigation, expulsions, all go
through the roof, which rather contradicts the, the narrative of the media anyway.
It's only in preparing their submission to the E HRC that the
party really becomes fully aware of what was going wrong prior to 2018.
Right now, the leak, the, so they, they produced this 861 page report, which in
the dying days of the Corman leadership is suddenly presented to the leadership.
And firstly, they're slightly panicked cuz it contains all
these WhatsApp conversations.
I mean, it really is extremely, it's it's critical of the Corbin period as
well, critical of the Jenny Formby.
It's not a whitewash by any means, but it's ferociously critical of
the regime under Ian McNichol, which had run the party previous.
and some of the evidence is so explosive that, you know, I think the people
E even the people running Corbin's headquarters are rather alarmed by it.
Even more alarmed, other party, otherwise, there's a very interesting thing happens
here, but to the enormous frustration of the young people who write the leak
report, the lawyers say, We can't hand this to the E hrc, we can't publish this.
And they're like, Why not this?
Here it is laid bare for the first time.
Mm-hmm.
. And they say, Look, they are judging the Labor Party.
What this report does is prove that the Labor Party was indeed inept.
Yeah.
In dealing with the antisemitism, they're, they're not judging one specific aspect.
They're judging the party as a whole.
We can't possibly release that this right now, therefore it's not submitted
to the HRC very shortly afterwards.
It's leaked in its entirety.
Unredacted, which is a mistake cuz it means all sorts of people's names
are in the public domain, which shouldn't be, you know, uh, and.
Uh, and, and the party concludes that the people who've leaked it or the
people who've written it now, they don't have any evidence of this, or
Alexei Sayle: by this time the party is starer rather than
Richard Sanders: party is starer.
Although the decision not to publish it and not to send it to the HRC
happens in, you know, virtually the last week of Corbin's time in charge.
That's not a decision by Stama.
Alexei Sayle: Yeah.
That's the subsequent hounding of the
Richard Sanders: author, of the authors and their line managers,
Shamus Mill and and Carrie Murphy.
Yeah.
It happens under, under Stara.
Yes.
And it, it, it, as I say, it's very hard to conclude, but that, that, that
behavior, it, it feels vindictive and, um, it, it feel, it feel, you know, I'm not
presenting this as a hard fact, but it, it feels as if these young people, you know,
very vulnerable young people are being punished for having written the report at.
Alexei Sayle: Yes.
I mean, in a way, I suppose sometimes you might think, well, this is just
the in, uh, um, you know, shenanigans, machinations of an organization
and it could, you know, the Elite Party is an organization in the
same sense that, um, you know, a fishing club or a football club or
you know, any, any, any organization.
Uh, a degree of, um, internal conflict.
But, um, this, I think this set of shenanigan is so much
more important, isn't it?
I think it tells us something profound about, um, how skewed our entire society
Richard Sanders: is.
Yes.
I mean, I think it, it's interesting cuz the right of the Labor Party, of
course, have every right to disagree with the left of the low party.
Um, factionalism happens within all parties.
It has ab every right to organize against the left of the party, every right to
seek power for itself within the party.
Um, I think what, particularly our film one was exposing is behavior that
that goes rather beyond factionalism.
What, what.
It appears to show is that frequently within the party, the reaction to
the extraordinary events of 2015 and 2016, when you get an absolute
takeoff in the membership Yeah.
Of the Labor Party.
You know, it's the extraordinary thing.
People forget now, massive increase in membership.
It becomes the largest political party in Western Europe,
over half a million members.
Now, you would think that political party would be quite pleased about
this , you know, quite excited.
What is extraordinary is that the, the sort of visceral reaction of the Labor
Party and then, you know, this is partly what we, we glean from the internal
files, but also you can see it publicly.
It's a sort of almost in visceral revulsion towards these members.
You can see it in the WhatsApp chance.
They're like, Who are these?
You know?
And when they, they assume that it's gonna be electoral disaster, I mean,
just be fair to them that they're.
, their principle objection is that they, they, they take the view, and
this was a very understandable view in 2015 and 16, that this was an act
of a camika, the act of, of self-harm.
Now, what's interesting is that as the 2017 election progresses, and in
fact labor parties, the Labor Party starts to soar in the polls and these
enormous crowds start to turn out.
They're saying to each other in these, what movie?
Who the hell are these people?
Yeah.
Who was gonna, who are these people?
There?
There's no delight in the fact that they're being proved wrong.
No.
And when Labor Party very on, you know, the, the extraordinary
portrait you get in the leaked report of the events of action night.
The, um, the leadership within Part D H Q are sort of ash face.
Mm-hmm.
, you know, they're, they're, they're appalled.
One of them I think, says, Ashley writes in, in one of the WhatsApp groups,
precisely the opposite of what I have been working for for the last two years.
I mean, it's extraordinarily an
Alexei Sayle: employee of Labor Party being upset.
That Labor Party is
Richard Sanders: tremendous and they're actually, I mean, actually, and you know,
you don't have to rely on me, Andrew Zero.
Or the leak report or the for report for this, um, Gabriel Poron and
Patrick McGuire's book left out.
Mm.
You know, a couple of Murdoch journalists, Murdoch employed journalists is very,
very good actually is well worth
Alexei Sayle: every book about this shit
Richard Sanders: I've read.
Yeah.
And it's very, But they, they have an extraordinary story of Ian McNichol,
the general secretary coming into work.
I think it's the next morning and somebody, the door closes and
somebody has this smash and he's drop kicked of VAs across the room.
That's his reaction to that I to live
Alexei Sayle: having tremendous success.
He,
Richard Sanders: Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
Um, so they, they, they, they seem to feel this sort of, you know, some of them
anyway at local and national level seem to feel this almost visceral revulsion
now in program one of the series, you know, we, we particularly look at two
places, Brighton and, and Wall, and I think they're very interesting sequences
where what happens is, now I'll be careful about, I, I, I put it here, but.
It would appear to be the case that the local right wing or the local incumbents,
the people who have power and have office and the local Labor party respond to the
enormous absurd of new members, generally from the left, generally pro Corbin, by
issuing a, a series of statements about their behavior, which appear to be untrue.
Alright, And which subsequent evidence certainly suggests to be untrue.
I mean, in Liverpool you have this, this wonderful story where there's, okay,
there's a dispute going on internally, people are campaigning against each
other and you always get the same thing.
People are accused of accessing the Labor party's data in order to campaign.
Okay?
And you shouldn't have access to the data or what have you.
The evidence for this is, this fella is supposedly spotted going
around this close in Liverpool wall, and he only puts leaflets through
the doors of the labor members.
This would indicate that he has access, illegal access.
This do the, and there are four witnesses to this.
All right Now to this fellow's enormous delight they've picked
on a weekend when he is in London.
Yeah.
And he can prove it.
He's got the, you know, the trade and so, you know, it's clearly not true and
that you have four witnesses who've all sworn to the fact that they saw him.
Yes.
So it's clearly not true.
Now he presents this evidence with great delight to lay party edge
quarters, and the owner reaction is one senior official says, Hmm, good job.
We didn't expel him.
Yeah.
And they do, in any case, expel him shortly afterwards.
Anyway.
Yeah.
So what you have is a situation where there's a remarkable remark,
little interest in engaging all these new members in, in debate.
I mean, you know, just because of all these people have joined, you don't
simply hand the party over to them.
That's that's fair enough.
Yeah.
But the reaction seems to be to simply utilize the rights control of the
party machinery to bring disciplinary measures against them and have them
expelled and, or, or, and, and they.
Labor HQ appears, appears to be Trump charges.
Yes.
Well, charges that often appears Trump.
Um, and, and, and, and, but Party HQ appears to just simply
go along with this, and there's very often very little scrutiny.
So you, Liverpool policy and Brighton in the notorious spitting
incident in Brighton, which appears not to take place to, and, and it.
Peter, you know, gets very angry about Peter Oborne gets very angry about this
in the series, and I think he's right.
What happens is that it's the most disgraceful.
Demonization, Yes.
Of perfectly decent.
Yes.
Really.
Labor party
Alexei Sayle: thoroughly decent
Richard Sanders: people.
For example, in liberal policy, they're being accused of homophobia.
Okay.
Yeah.
And they're being accused of, I mean it's sort of 1970s Larry Grace and stuff of
making limp wrist gestures and so on.
And then you go and you meet these people, which of course journalists never did.
And they're perfectly decent, responsible, mature trade unionists
very often, very often who have, you know, gay or bisexual children.
And it, and it's quite ludicrous.
And what I found particularly mortifying, was the readiness
of the sort of London based.
To just swallow any,
Alexei Sayle: Yeah, well you've got, you've got there, you've got Tessa Jo
who had many, many skeletons in her own closet, um, being allowed to make
these accusations and then people she's accusing of given no right or reply
Richard Sanders: whatsoever.
And the media had no interest in going and talking to them.
No.
Um, I mean you see this in my film as well, where we go and talk to Rika
Bur and Helen Marks in Liverpool.
Riverside, Yeah.
Liverpool Riverside again.
A constituency, Labor party, Louise Elman, um, who had been, I think
it's the chair of the Labor Friends of Israel, something like that.
Anyway, um, she was my mom's mp.
Yeah.
And so, and you'll be familiar with, with this, you know, Liverpool Riverside
was portrayed as the sort of dark heart of the labor antisemitism scandal.
Louis Alman was very vocal about the appalling abuse she'd received.
So you actually do journalism and go there and travel to the dark cart, and
you meet the two women involved in the story That is is in the Panorama film.
Yeah.
About that constituency.
Yeah.
And what do you find, you find too little old Jewish ladies who didn't
say what they're said to have said and have a tape recording to prove
Alexei Sayle: it.
Yeah.
And yet that, that they were completely ignored.
Richard Sanders: Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and, and, and as I say, you know, I've said this before, um, Joshua Funnel,
Uncovered that tape recording a week after the, the panorama went to, to air.
Yeah.
And, and published it in, in the canary.
I've written about it before.
A Middle East eye.
No one came a down, you know, No, no one still gives a down,
it would say, but no, it's, it's got a little bit more prominence.
But it's, it was the, the readiness of, of the national media to simply swallow
any nonsense about the labor rugby file.
Yeah.
And it was disgraceful.
It was sort of metropolitan snobbery.
Um, and, and really, you know, the absolute slandering and defaming
of people whose only crime was to engage in the political process.
And there was a guy in the, in Brighton, I think, who says, My, my, my first
mistake was to join the Labor Party.
My second mistake was to win an election.
The labor person.
Yeah.
And all hell broke loose about their heads.
It was disgraceful.
Yeah.
Alexei Sayle: Unbelievable.
I mean, so, I mean, what, what now do you think really, I suppose, is the,
Richard Sanders: Well, I mean, I think, um, I think, you know, I'm a
journalist and what I care about is journalism and I think journalists,
there really ought to be a reckon.
It's a very interesting thing.
M Lynch, who, who you know, is a very able media performer.
I'm not sure he's the genius he's, he's made out to be, but you know,
when you and I were kids working class blokes, trade union leaders, and they
normally were blokes, well, you'd certainly see the mentality all the time.
Articulate, working class socialists.
Yeah.
Were not some sort of freak novel.
In media, and I think both our political and media class have become much narrower
and more middle class and more sort of metropolitan than they used to be.
And I think it's very, you know, Mick Lynch sort of falls like a
pebble on a still pond, doesn't he?
Alexei Sayle: But it's also the fact that he just says, I mean, and it's a
lesson for, I suppose for Covin as well.
He just said he would, he constantly says, No, that's a lie.
No, that's not true.
No, you're making that or, No, that didn't happen.
You know, in a much, in a, in a way that I think the left, And I think
Richard Sanders: I, I think, you know, I think there's openings,
as I said, I treat the whole thing as a market opening in a way.
And the via media attempts to do, do what it does.
Yeah.
But I think there are a lot of young people.
The, the whole Corbin thing has now simply been relegated to history
as if it was some sort of bizarre freakish, extremist aberration.
The two, if, if you are our generation, okay?
Your, your political outlook is shaped by the elections, and I'm
slightly younger than you, Alex.
Um, the, our political outlook is shaped entirely by, um, two elections, 83 and 97.
And I have to admit, I bought into this, those two elections appeared to
show that regardless of whatever you believed, the further left you moved,
the fewer votes you got, the further right, you moved towards the center
triangulation, the more votes you got.
When Corbin was elected to zero, I thought, Well, I'd rather like him and
I rather agree with, with a lot of what he says, but this seems absolutely daft
and they're just clearly eradicating themselves to electoral irrelevance.
Then you had the extraordinary phenomenon of the 2017 election, okay,
which just blew this out of the water.
Yes, and.
I was amazed by the crew to which my colleagues in mainstream media and people
of my generation simply just carried on as before, as if this hadn't happened.
Yes.
And, and, and now when you look at sort of analysis of modern British
history and the strategy that a bud is pursue and so on, the, the media
simply writes the 2017 election out of completely as if it never happened.
Yeah.
And the 2019 election, the Labor Party got a higher share of the
vote than it had in 2010 and 2015.
Yeah.
You know, even that and one by quite a margin amongst people under 50.
So I, I think, I think in time, I think this simple.
Ignoring of the perspective of a huge chunk of the British population isn't
tenable and I, I, I, I'd hope it would, you know, create openings for
younger journalists coming through to, to challenge the sort of stranglehold
of say, you know, the, the sort of guardian commentary has on, um, on, on.
On mainstream or, you know, what would regard itself as liberal left?
Yeah.
Journalism and I, I think there is an enormous opening,
cause I think there's, Cause at
Alexei Sayle: the moment that's what I always say is that, you know, we're not
right all the time socialist, but there's a huge, there's like, I don't know,
four, 5 million people that, you know, ba you know, anti, you know, you know,
you take the 2 million people that went on the Iraq mark and then drop it March
and then double it or whatever, you know?
Mm-hmm.
, who believe in, you know, nationalization, anti-colonialism, Palestine, all that
stuff we're completely locked out.
The political, the parliamentary process at the moment, I can't,
I mean, I'd like it's, I find it, um, Uh, make, uh, pleasing that
you think that that can't go on
Richard Sanders: forever?
I don't think it can go on forever because, because
there's, that group is so big.
I mean, the, the labor right.
Always related to momentum and the cite op search as if they were dealing with
militant and the Socialist Workers party and various sort Trotsky sects of the
eighties, they, they never grasp that they were dealing with a mass movement.
They were, they were dealing with something very different.
Yeah.
Um, and, and I, I don't, And also different from 83, there's
a huge age differential here.
As I say, in 2009, even in 2019, Corbin won by a lot among people under 50.
Yeah.
You know, and, and by a hell of a lot amongst, under people under 40.
Yeah.
And I think that it's bubbling away and it will come to the
fore again, at the moment.
The left is in, in, in complete disarray.
I think, I think it's a sh on one level, it's a shame that the implosion of the.
Government is so extraordinary that I think that everybody
may well win by considerable.
It might might well be that it'll win by a considerable majority, and
that will mean all sorts of problems can be swep swept under the carpet.
Because I mean, one of
Alexei Sayle: the things that they're doing very consciously is making sure that
only right wingers get to standards MP
Richard Sanders: now that the Yeah.
The Parliament relay, but was pretty Right.
We can just start with you.
Yeah.
Alexei Sayle: And getting more, getting worse.
Yeah.
And that obviously the attack on Sam Terry and on, you know, and, uh, the
other, uh, you know, the deselection of, of the, I mean all the deselection,
uh, contests at the moment, but all against left wing mps aren't Yeah.
Not that Sam Terry is actually that bleeding left wing.
No,
Richard Sanders: I, I, I think that'll, that'll gather pace.
I think, you know, looking at in broad terms, the thing
that would break the hold.
These two parties on the British system would be pr.
Yeah.
And, and, and, and you know, they, you do feel more and more the desperate
need for PR just to loosen up and free up the British political system.
And, um, if, you know, this was supposed to be coming in 97 and
of course Blair then forgot all about it cause he didn't need it.
Cause he'd won by so much.
And I have a nasty feeling.
The same might happen this time.
Yes.
Although I, I, I find it hard to imagine Stama winning the
same sort of majority Blair.
Alexei Sayle: Yes.
Or being as, yeah, serving more than one term if he does.
Really?
Cuz he's such a dickhead
. Richard Sanders: Well, you might say that.
Um, yes.
I mean, Blair, what everyone thinks of Blair was very,
very good at being Tony Blair.
Whereas Sharma, who appears to have decided that he, his
job is to beat any player.
very good at being Tony Blair.
He's not
Alexei Sayle: very good at anything, I think.
Well, that's a remarkably, uh, upbeat, uh, conclusion I think to end this podcast.
It is, isn't I?
I haven't
Richard Sanders: thought that, that I might be upbeat about something.
Yeah, I think, I think you can't, you know, that you can't, you
can't beat people down forever.
And I think also our.
series.
You know, the people that deter seem to be determined not to listen to her eye.
Would urge anyone listening to please, please share as widely as you can.
The films, cuz it's sort of, it's like a sort of subterranean book.
It's only gonna be spread by word of mouth.
Yeah.
You know, it's, were clearly not gonna get any, some is that, uh, Yeah.
But I'm, there's maybe gonna be an implication, amplification from the
mainstream, but it is sort of slowly
Alexei Sayle: seeping out there and the odd like sort of, you know,
kind of like George Maia going, Oh, what's the dear, I didn't know
about this Michael Crick as well.
Yeah.
Michael Crick.
Richard Sanders: Yeah.
I get the Hitchens blessing, you know, and yeah.
Yeah.
And I think also, this attitude, particularly by the bbc, that if
we just keep very quiet, no one will notice it ever happened.
, you know it.
I remember the observer haven't written about it, so we're all right.
It is very old fashioned.
The, the, the clip involving Ben Westman and Rika Bird in Liverpool.
Riverside has been, That clip has been shared a million times on social media.
Yes.
And you can't
Alexei Sayle: really, this is this man terrified by these two elderly brought
to tears by these two elderly Jewish ladies who didn't say what he says.
Richard Sanders: They said, That's right.
For all brick and birders across since been expelled anyway.
And I said,
Alexei Sayle: Daughter, Joe.
Of course.
Yeah.
Tell says a lot of idiots sort of go on about the ownership of Al Jazeer.
Is it worth it addressing that or I don't.
Oh
Richard Sanders: God.
Cause I've never quite got the lines straight.
Yeah.
I mean, all I would say in response to that is, you know, if I forever
for a moment came under any sort of, Editorial pressure, uh, to, to
curb my journalism by the owners.
And I wouldn't have worked on the project.
I mean, yeah.
And um, I mean obviously if I was making a film about conditions at World Cup
Stadiums, I wouldn't make it brow to zero.
No.
You know?
Um, but in this instance there's no editor or interference
at all, and it's a subject.
Clearly they were the only ones prepared to.
Yeah,
Alexei Sayle: fair enough.
I think.
Well, there you go.
Upbeat conclusion.
Yes.
Onwards.
Comrades.
. Richard Sanders: Thank you Richard.
Thank you for having me.
Alexei Sayle: It's been a absolute pleasure.
It's, uh, yeah.
Brilliant.
Hello everybody.
We thought that was the end of the podcast, but we've decided to come back.
It's two weeks later.
We've had 11 different chancellors of the ex checker, and there's
been more developments in the John, we and Panorama case.
So, uh, Richard has come back and, uh, tell us what, uh, what's
Richard Sanders: going on now, Richard?
So when I was with you before, I made the point that John, we and the BBC appeared
to be responding to the allegations against us by simply pretending they
didn't happen by, by essentially saying, We stand by our journalism.
And that was it.
Not to respond to the specific allegations.
Now, almost immediately we'd done that interview, John, We produced online a
six and a half thousand word article, um, where he very definitely did decide
to respond to the allegations, but it, it, it's an extraordinary read.
It can be found online.
He, he wrote it for a thing called the article.
Um, so read it.
Your listeners can find it online and, and read it and make their own minds up.
But essentially there are four very concrete allegations in the film.
The article by John, we.
deals with half, or really less than half of one of them and convincingly, but yeah.
Well, we'll come to his arguments about it, you know,
the enormously detailed piece.
Mm-hmm.
, but he's the, the, the, the sequences in the film that I think most people
have found most striking, you know, the sequence about Ben Westerman,
Enrika bird up in Liverpool, where the, the, the recorded evidence would
certainly suggest his account of their, their meeting was inaccurate.
The Izzy Langa story where she claimed she was told Hitler was right.
Hitler didn't go far enough in the Labor party every day.
Yeah.
You know, uh, various extraordinary things.
What he's focused on is our story about shameless.
Email.
Now, the, the main point of that story was that we felt it had been unfairly edited.
The context had been removed, um, that Mel was referring very specifically
to a Jewish party member and, and, and referring very specifically to those
situations where Jews were being accused.
Um, and, and the Panorama program simply missed out that context.
Now, for us, that was the principle point of that sequence.
And, and, uh, John Way doesn't address that at all.
What he does address is something which is really just a single sentence
in the film, which is to say that, um, in fact, in fact, shame as Melon
was responding to a request for information from party headquarters,
from the disputes, well, from the person who oversaw the disputes team.
So in our telling, that would undermine the argument that
the leadership was interfering.
Now it's very interesting what he does here actually.
I mean, it's, although it's terribly specific point, he's hond in on,
it's actually very interesting to hone in on that point and to really
pick apart what happens there.
And I'll, I'll whisper it very, very fast.
I won't take six and a half thousand words, I promise.
I promise we won't.
Well, very, very briefly what happens is, This website called Palestine
Live is exposed by a dossier.
Okay?
And this is out there in the press as, as containing antisemitic
statements and rhetoric and, and so on.
James Schneider at in the Leader's office reads this and is, is horrified by it.
He feels some of it is, is genuinely antisemitic and, uh, rings up the
disputes team at part headquarters to say, Well, what are we doing about this?
To find that they're not doing anything at all about it anyway, They, at that point,
they do stop doing something about it.
So yes, on one level, um, the.
Initiative initially here.
It does come from the leader's office, but I think you come back to this again
and again and again, and it's a thing that has been totally absence in the reporting.
That when you do hone in and focus on instances where the leader's office do
appear to have intervened, invariably they're inter intervening to speed
things up and make them tougher.
Mm-hmm.
. Now the e HRC report, which of course damned, um, Corbin, if you actually
read it carefully and you have to read it very carefully, it acknowledge.
This and, and it, it takes the extraordinary argument that
the aim of the intervention is irrelevant simply by intervening.
They are undermining the process and therefore that's antisemitic.
So in other words, if Corbin responds to the immense pressure on him to
do something, to get a grip by, Doing something and getting a grip.
Yes.
That in itself Yes.
Is antisemitic.
Yeah.
And it's absolutely absurd logic.
Yeah.
And that, but that's the EHRs, he's logic.
That's the general example
Alexei Sayle: of the fucking bullshit through the fucking black mirror
world that, you know, this is
Richard Sanders: Yeah.
And, and, and, and actually if you, I mean, you know, listeners do want to
sort of really hone in on the thing that John Weir isri writing about.
You know, it is indeed slightly complex that one who contacts
who first and who's responding to who, you know, John Weir is right.
It's not straightforwardly that, um, where responds out of the blue
that, that he's correct in that.
But when you really, when you, um, mil not where that's right now, Mil
is not responding out of the blue.
He, he, he is.
There's, there's already an ongoing conversation, but.
I mean, you know, and what actually happens to is because
it is quite a revealing story.
Um, and this can all be read in the leaked report, the famous leaked
report, which is available online.
If you, you, it doesn't take much looking.
You can find it online and is the absolute Bible if you actually want
to understand what happened here.
It's an extraordinary document in large measure, not entirely, but
in large measures now vindicated by the subsequent forward report.
Yeah.
So what actually happens?
What actually happens on, it's quite a good story.
So Schneider and, and I'm taking my account here from the, the
leak report, which is incredibly detailed and backed up by footnotes,
possibly other participants in this.
Event might have different accounts, but whatever.
Um, so Schneider says, Well, what are you doing?
And they effectively, cause it turns out they're doing nothing.
So they, they start to do something, they come up with three names.
Okay.
They, they suspend three people.
Two of them are party members who have absolutely nothing to do with the
Palestine Live website, but simply happen to share the same name as two people.
who, who do have something to do with the pulse.
Yeah.
And the third one is, is this Jewish member, the son of a Holocaust survivor.
Yeah.
Um, who hasn't actually written anything at all on, on the, He's a
member of the, of the, of the chatroom.
Mm-hmm.
, Uh, but he hasn't actually written anything at all.
And so what Schneider is saying is a, Why are you going for this
Jewish boat when, for example, and he identifies somebody else who
is a straight up Holocaust denier.
Who they're entirely ignoring.
Yeah.
And, and that, that starts to hold backwards and forwards, whereby the,
the suspension of the Jewish guy is eventually lifted because Matthews, who
runs the dispute in himself, Acknowledges.
It's a very weak case anyway, so it's, it's a, you know, this is
all an incredible amount of detail.
Um, as I say, people if they, if they want, can read the lead.
Well,
Alexei Sayle: I think our listeners do seem to, you know, there's a, well,
there's a section of our listeners anyway that love this, you know, and it's not, I
mean, in the sense it's not arcane, is it?
Because this is a, you know, reading these reports and stuff, this is a,
about a fundamental kind of destruction of democracy in a way, a fundamental
ruin in of, of, of the one chance of a different, uh, political viewpoint that
was, you know, that opposed neoliberalism.
And so it's not, you know, on one level yeah, it's, you
know, thousands of documents.
But it's, it's really
Richard Sanders: important to, but there is very environment and, and
really, regardless of what one thinks of Jeremy Corbin, and I'm not a huge
admir of Jeremy Corbin, probably, probably less than, than, than yourself.
Mm-hmm.
, but.
The media doesn't have the right to simply destroy the of the
opposition cause it doesn't like him.
Yeah.
You know, he, he had the right to expect basically honest and fair
journalism, um, if not from the Telegraph and the mail and so on, at
least from the BBC Itn and The Guardian.
And he didn't get it.
No,
Alexei Sayle: I agree.
And that's fucking amazingly important.
Should we end there or do you want, do you wanna take John Word parts a bit more?
I think I'll leave it . All right.
Leave it there.
As they used to say on it when, as Jeremy Clarkson used to say on the
old top gear on that bombshell.
We'll leave it there.
Thank you for listening.
Subscribing, contribute to our Patreon and, uh, enjoy this
podcast and see you next time.
Bye.
You've been listening to
Richard Sanders: the LEL Podcasts.
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Alexei Sayle: produced and exited by
Richard Sanders: Talal Carti.
Music by Tar Bus records.
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Alexei Sayle: to Anthony Overton for the sand mixing and to
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Please keep your emails coming, inic gmail.com.
Richard Sanders: Bye.