Amateur Dramatics

Staged Allegation of Antisemitism

At a launch, to which the media were invited, on 30 June 2016 for the publication of the Chakrabarti Inquiry report into allegations of antisemitism and racism in the Labour Party, The Daily Telegraph journalist Kate McCann questioned Jeremy Corbyn about a “Momentum member” handing out a “leaflet” calling for the deselection of anti-Corbyn MPs. Marc Wadsworth had earlier given Kate McCann a copy of the “press release” at her request. In response to the question about him, Wadsworth responded by publicly stating that he saw The Telegraph journalist handing a copy of the press release to Labour MP Ruth Smeeth, and thus claimed to have spotted who was “working hand in hand”, a reference to anti-Corbyn Labour MPs colluding with the right-wing press. Cameras in place, Ruth Smeeth’s laughably bad acting expressing her faux outrage before she flounced out, followed by Kate McCann, created their manufactured storm of media controversy and an absurd complaint from Smeeth that Wadsworth had used an antisemitic conspiracy theory to attack her. Marc Wadsworth did not know Smeeth was Jewish. As she had been director of public affairs and campaigns at BICOM, the British Israel Communications and Research Centre she may wrongly have assumed he would know her work for Israel, before working for Nestlé and that she is a “strictly protected” source for the American intelligence services and was an officer of the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, Poale Zion פועלי ציון.  Watch her performance, it is classic!  John Pienaar who was  Deputy Political Editor for BBC News, and presenter of Pienaar Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live, is part of the show, circled on the left. When Smeeth flounces out at the end of the video Pineear follows her.  Kevin Schofield previously Chief political correspondent at the Sun is the one circled on the right. You also see Darren McCaffrey of Sky giving stage directions. Of course she is not hand in hand with the media, it is just a strange coincidence some of the very best at staging media events are with her.

“So it was a SKY man @DMcCaffreySKY, and the Deputy Political editor of the BBC @JPonpolitics, and an Ex-Sun now Political Home @PolhomeEditor and Ex-Sun now the Telegraph’s @KateEMcCann, well that is impartial… NOT!”  —  Joe Hickster‏ 

Marc Wadsworth later explained that he had been volunteering as Momentum Black Connexions‘s media officer and handing out their press release; that it was this same document that Smeeth had asked McCann for in front of him; that he asked her who she was and she replied “Ruth Smeeth Labour MP”; and that he did not recognise the name. Smeeth said she was “verbally attacked” and accused of being part of a media conspiracy. She added: “it is beyond belief that someone could come to the launch of a report on antisemitism in the Labour Party and espouse such vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people, which were ironically highlighted as such in Ms Chakrabarti’s report”.

On 1 July 2016, Wadsworth told a radio station he had been expelled from the Labour Party based solely on media reports. At the time of his expulsion, he had been a member of the Labour Party for one month, having resigned his membership in 2003 at the time of Tony Blair’s Iraq War. After receiving a letter from Wadsworth’s lawyer, Harriet Wistrich, Labour changed this to a suspension. On 4 July 2016, Jeremy Corbyn was quizzed about Wadsworth at several points in a Parliamentary Select Committee hearing, and called Wadsworth’s comments about Smeeth wrong and inappropriate but refused to declare them racist or antisemitic which would have been a lie. On 8 July 2016, the National Union of Journalists announced that Wadsworth had been elected as chairman of its Black Members Council (BMC), adding that the BMC fully supported him after the media had “slanderously accused him of anti-semitism”.

At the first day’s hearing by the secretive National Constitutional Committee (NCC) into Wadsworth’s future in the Labour Party, around 40 Labour MPs and peers theatrically accompanied Smeeth to ensure her safety from an unnamed danger. The Labour MPs Chris Williamson and Clive Lewis acted as character witnesses for Wadsworth. On 27 April 2018, the National Constitutional Committee found that two charges of a breach of s.2.1.8 of the Labour Party Rule Book  —  “no member of the Party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the Party”  —   were proven. The NCC determined that the sanction for this breach of party rules would be expulsion from membership of the Labour Party.

“The Labour Party has expelled an activist who reduced a Labour MP to tears.”  —  Daily Mail (27 April 2018)  Oddly no one witnessed these tears nor did any of the many videos catch that half-baked ruse, added later to the script.

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Ruth Smeeth continues her bad acting, terrified to walk alone in Westminster without a
crew of anti-Corbyn MPs to protect her, Luciana Berger and Jess Phillips. (25 April 2018)

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At the launch of “The Shami Charabarti Inquiry into antisemitism and other forms of racism”, Marc Wadsworth’s point was about racism against black people, not a concern Ruth Smeeth believes has any merit, “I saw that the Telegraph handed a copy of a press release to Ruth Smeeth MP so you can see who is working hand in hand. If you look around this room, how many African, Caribbean and Asian people are there? We need to get our house in order, don’t we?” Antisemitism in those words?  Not to anyone rational.  Her walking out on his mention of African, Caribbean and Asian people was deeply racist.

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Defamation is a serious matter in a court of law. Marc should not settle out of court but should have the crime proven in court.

“As intended Ruth Smeeth’s staged walkout received more prominence than the Chakrabarti report’s overall finding that the party “is not overrun by antisemitism”. That cannot have displeased Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents and those who manipulate the very real phenomenon of antisemitism for political ends.”

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“The murder of Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old black student, by a gang of white racists on 22 April 1993 was a shocking and seminal event. He was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack near a bus stop in Well Hall Road near Shooter’s Hill in southeast London. It later led to an inquiry by the judge Sir William Macpherson who strongly criticised the failure of detectives to bring the killers to justice and condemned ‘institutionalised racism’ within the Metropolitan Police.

Marc Wadsworth, as national secretary of the Anti-Racist Alliance (ARA), contacted Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, and played a significant role in bringing the tragedy to public attention. According to one BBC commentator later: Wadsworth was determined to present the Stephen Lawrence case differently, and to break through the indifference of the tabloid press towards black victims of racism’. Wadsworth highlighted the fact that Lawrence wanted to be an architect and that he had been law abiding, diligent and respectful. ‘We were saying to white society: “Stephen Lawrence was like you.”  Few people thought it a coincidence that the bookshop-cum-headquarters of the far right British National Party were in Welling, not far from where Lawrence died.”

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Marc Wadsworth made a documentary film Divided by Race, United in War and Peace about his late father’s fellow Caribbean war veterans and their struggles against colour prejudice and racism. The BBC remade the film, with Wadsworth as a producer, and, in May 2015, Fighting for King and Empire: Britain’s Caribbean Heroes was broadcast.”