Some of the film is nice and heartwarming; some scenes of big rallies from the Corbyn moment, when we won the leadership, and the 2017 election campaign. Some of the parts about sabotage by Labour Party staffers are still shocking, even though I have read about them before.
I have no doubt that Jeremy Corbyn is not an antisemite, certainly not in the sense of someone with a personal antipathy towards Jews. Nor do I doubt that people in the Labour Party and outside who don't care much about Jews, or racism, were keen to use and abuse the allegations of antisemitism for factional and party-political purposes without any concern either for truth or for the impact that their tactics would have on actual Jews. Claims about antisemitism were indeed weaponised and abused.
But it's also true that there were actual antisemites in the Labour Party. Not many - I've hardly ever met any - though even a few is too many. Some of them were and are people who are just clumsy in the way they express hostility to Israel and Zionism, and unthinkingly draw on anti-Jewish themes. Some are a bit nastier than that, and some are lot nastier. Pretending that this isn't so, or that it doesn't really matter because no-one is slaughtering Jews in the streets, is bad for our movement. Being stupid is never a good idea.
Sometimes Corbyn just made mistakes - like with the business about the awful mural in the East End of London, which he initially didn't denounce as anti-Jewish. When he did make mistakes he wasn't given much opportunity to admit that, apologise and move on - though who is these days?
It would have been better if he could have admitted that "our movement" does not have a proud history on the subject of antisemitism, from labour movement opposition to the immigration of Jewish refugees and the antisemitic rhetoric that well-known labour and socialist figures used, the silence of the plight of refugees in the 1930s, the protection of Mosley's revived fascist movement in the 1940s by the Labour home secretary, and so on. It would have been better if he had occasionally denounced antisemitism without instantly adding "and all forms of racism"...like some weird left version of "All Lives Matter". It would have been great if he could have showed some understanding of why antisemitism is such an important dimension of far right thought, as a unifying explanatory theme for conspiracy theories.
But the film isn't about any of that. Although it has plenty of talking heads denouncing the accusations of antisemitism, it barely touches on what those accusations were. Watching it you would think that it was only about criticisms of Israel and Zionism.
And it doesn't help that some of the talking heads have absolutely turned out to be people who are antisemites. An obvious example is Professor David Miller of Bristol University...really, when Socialist Worker says you've crossed the boundary from anti-Zionism to actual antisemitism, you really have. Also appearing is Chris Williamson, who has recently joined George Galloway's red-brown "Workers Party". Galloway has appeared on platforms with Nigel Farage and with Breitbart's Steve Bannon.
And Jackie Walker. Jackie Walker appears more than anyone else in the film, and she seems to be clear and reasonable. From the film you wouldn't know that lots of people on the left have acknowledged that she has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, and that the only shred of an excuse that anyone can make for her is that she didn't know this stuff was untrue and therefore her intentions weren't antisemitic.
I'd like to hope that one day the left will realise that it needs to deal honestly and fairly with its own history of antisemitism, and that this film will be a terrible embarrassment. I'm not holding my breath though.
And in the final analysis, the politics of the film are really not at all thought through. Although there's quite a lot about how horrible Starmer is - much of which I don't dispute - there's nothing about how he came to be leader, by the same process that had previously allowed Corbyn to win. There's nothing except a prolonged "we was robbed" whine, nothing about what should happen now for the left. Because what the film appears to say is that not only is it impossible for the left to take control of the state and use it for socialist purposes, it's not even possible to take control of the Labour Party.
I'm going to leave the last word to Andrew Murray, who does feature in the film as an adviser to Corbyn...but neither these words, nor the sentiment that they reflect, appear anywhere in the film:
“I do not believe that Corbynism was defeated by conspiracies in the common sense of the term. It was defeated by the class enemy, and its own mistakes contributed to that significantly. One can argue about which mistakes carried what relative weight, but that is where the debate needs to be.
“As far as antisemitism goes, it has always been my view that the Jewish community had real concerns which were not properly addressed. Bad faith actors in the mass media and those opposed to Corbynism for other reasons surely exacerbated the problem (that’s political life wherein any weakness is exploited by opponents), but they did not invent it. Antisemitism on the left is a complex issue that needs addressing in a sober fashion… [the film] would have done better to interview at least a more balanced range of those involved in the Corbyn movement rather than leaning heavily in the conspiracist direction […]
“To conclude, for anyone on the left to believe that Corbyn was defeated by a conspiracy by Jewish organisations is doubly dangerous:
“First, it risks stirring up animosity towards the Jewish community and breathing further life into antisemitism at a dangerous time.
“Second, it misdirects the Left down a blind alley and prevents it learning the lessons that need to be drawn from the achievements and failures of the Corbyn years.”
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