Labour’s decision to pay a six-figure libel settlement to ex-staffers who claimed the party was failing to deal with antisemitism has plunged the party back into civil war, with Jeremy Corbyn publicly condemning his successor’s decision to settle the case.
Corbyn’s statement caused astonishment among the litigants in the libel action, with the Panorama journalist John Ware confirming to the Guardian that he was “consulting his lawyers” and raising the prospect of another costly court battle over Labour and antisemitism.
Corbyn said he was disappointed by the settlement brokered under Keir Starmer, calling it a “political decision” against legal advice, and said the decision “risks giving credibility to misleading and inaccurate allegations about action taken to tackle antisemitism in the Labour party in recent years.”
The former leader, who is believed to have considered a court challenge to the settlement along with senior allies, said the party had received legal advice that it would win the libel case brought by the seven ex-staffers and the journalist who made the BBC Panorama programme on which they appeared.
The ex-staff members alleged senior figures in the party minimised and interfered with attempts to deal with antisemitism complaints about party members. They sued the party for defamation after Labour spokespeople described them as having “political axes to grind,” suggesting they had acted in bad faith, and said Ware had conducted “deliberate and malicious misrepresentations designed to mislead the public”.
In court on Monday Labour apologised “unreservedly” to the seven former employees and to Ware, admitting it had defamed them. The case is understood to have cost Labour around £600,000, with around £180,000 in damages agreed for the eight individuals.
The decision to settle and apologise incensed key figures on the left of the party who have claimed that a separate leaked report on “hyperfactionalism” among those dealing with antisemitism complaints – which named some of the Panorama whistleblowers – vindicates the comments made in the wake of the programme.
The leaking of that report and its contents, including emails, messages and private WhatsApps, is now the subject of an independent inquiry by the QC Martin Forde, and legal action is also being taken against the party by people named within it.
Mark Lewis, the solicitor who acted for Ware and the whistleblowers, revealed to the Guardian that he had been approached by 32 individuals who want to take action against the party for a range of allegations, mainly centring on the fallout from the leaked report.
Lewis told BBC’s Newsnight that one of the new litigants was Lord Iain McNichol, a Labour life peer. He said he had been “named in the report” for “things that simply didn’t happen”.
He said the claims centred on “five or six courses of action” including potential breaches of the Data Protection Act, breaches of confidence, misuse of private information, libel, and employment law in relation to the responsibility of an employer to protect its staff regarding work issues.
Defending the Labour party’s decision to issue the statements against the whistleblowers before the documentary screened, Corbyn said the leaked report had proved there was concern “about the role played by some of those who took part in the programme”.
He said: “Labour party members have a right to accountability and transparency of decisions taken in their name, and an effective commitment from the party to combat antisemitism and racism in all their forms.
“The party’s decision to apologise today and make substantial payments to former staff who sued the party in relation to last year’s Panorama programme is a political decision, not a legal one.
“To give our members the answers and justice they deserve, the inquiry led by Martin Forde must now fully address the evidence the internal report uncovered of racism, sexism, factionalism and obstruction of Labour’s 2017 general election campaign.”
The Forde inquiry is not expected to report until the end of the year. Labour is also awaiting the full publication of an inquiry into institutional antisemitism by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, likely to come next month.
On Wednesday Starmer’s spokesman defended the decision to settle and said he regretted that members’ funds had to be used in that way.
“All three candidates for the leadership – Keir, Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey – said at the Jewish Labour Movement hustings that they would seek to settle this issue and also they believed that the party had not taken the right approach at the time,” the spokesman said. “It’s a sign we will take a zero-tolerance approach and we are utterly determined to restore trust in Jewish community.
“Of course we regret [the use of members’ funds], we never wanted to get to this position, but the decision was taken to settle and unreservedly apologise.”
The Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, also criticised the decision to settle and called it a misuse of party funds. “The leaked report on how antisemitism was handled tells a very different story about what happened,” he said.
Leftwing members of the party’s governing national executive committee, who are a minority on the body, are set to demand that Starmer account for the size of the settlement and that the party publish the legal advice it was given about the case.
Louise Withers-Green, one of the seven whistleblowers who had all previously worked in the party’s complaints unit, said she hoped it was the end of the saga for them. “We all had given so much to the party, as a staff and as volunteers for so many years,” she told the Guardian. “The backlash has been quite difficult to deal with.”
She said she had been thanked and praised by Jewish party members. “When it’s been difficult, I’ve held on to the fact that people out of nowhere will come up and say that they are left-wing and Jewish and that what we did really, really meant a lot to them,” she said.
