Political alliances trump members safety
On October 4th several high profile members were suspended from the Labour Party following a decision made by the Sexual Harassment Panel, a panel made up of members of the NEC. On October 5th it transpired that Jas Athwal, who had put himself forward to become the party’s Parliamentary candidate in Ilford South, was among those suspended. Following this decision, many on the Right of the Party took to social media to share their belief that Jas Athwal or the selection process had been the victims of a stitch up by the Left of the Party. This is clearly far from the reality of the situation, which I will begin to outline further on in this article, and has prompted me to write an open letter to the NEC, which I would encourage all members to sign.
This knee jerk reaction of defending political allies from allegations of sexual harassment only harms survivors. Excusing sexual harassment for factional reasons, says that if you are in a particular position and have a certain status you are untouchable from allegations of sexual harassment as they can simply be written off as politically motivated. Perpetrators know this and so whilst victims are seeing this as a reason to continue remaining silent, perpetrators get ever more comfortable. The message to perpetrators is that even when action is taken, they’ll be protected from the full consequences by their political allies.
The glaring omission the critics of this decision make is that the Sexual Harassment panel is completely anonymised. Members of the NEC on the panel do not know the names of the victims or of the alleged perpetrators. This obviously makes stitching up the decision impossible, unless one is to delve into conspiracy theories.
The next point is that left winger Steven Saxby was also suspended by the same panel, one must again question whether in a so-called stitch up by the Left if they would take down one of their own. According to these conspiracy theorists, Yes! The Left removed their own candidate in the Cities of London and Westminster in order to make the Athwal suspension seem more credible.
To accept, then, that Jas Athwal has been the victim of a stitch up is to also accept many outlandish beliefs along the timeline in order for us to reach that conclusion, that Athwal was stitched up by the NEC in an anonymous panel on claims of some form of Sexual Harrasment, the details of which are, of course, not public. Let us delve into a few of these.
It is believed that the complaints against Athwal were made a number of months ago, prior to Athwal declaring he was running to be Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) for Ilford South on August 16th. Given that Athwal also describes the allegations against him as ‘untrue’, this suggests that the Left of the Party orchestrated a false sexual harassment complaint against Athwal on the off-chance he was to run for PPC in order to take him down for the betterment of a more left-wing candidate. This also suggests that the left of the party were able to find someone willing to fabricate a false allegation, drive it through the complaints process — a complaints process frequently criticised as being ineffective or incompetent — and that, despite the presumed false evidence, it managed to stand up to high levels of scrutiny, progress to the independent NEC Sexual Harassment panel and succeed in having Athwal suspended.
All while the Governance and Legal Unit has the power to suspend members for wrong doing anyway, and so could have simply suspended Athwal for something far more minor that didn’t require the same process, procedures or scrutiny than the Sexual Harassment process.
Those on the Right of the Party who took to social media to express their outrage have clearly dismissed both the reality and the gravity of the situation.
Their belief that this is the derailment of Athwal’s career at the expense of a bogus political manoeuvre rather than acknowledging the NECs decision, based on evidence provided to them by an investigative officer who has compiled the findings of the independent sexual harassment investigator and sought the legal advice of a barrister, that Athwal is thought to have committed the alleged sexual harassment; betrays a careerist mentality which clearly has no consideration or concern for the perpetuation of rape culture and the safeguarding of vulnerable people.
By delving into these nonsensical conspiracy theories about a stitch up, the victim of said sexual harassment has their credible testimony disregarded and thrown on the trash heap — ignored because it is not politically beneficial to Athwal or his supporters to acknowledge. To them, they have already pre-decided its authenticity and believe this is a battle between Right and Left and not, as is the reality, someone (or multiple people) having the strength to come forward and report the abuse they have faced. Those defending Athwal have not even for a second considered the impact their apologism will have on Athwal’s alleged victim(s).
An uncomfortable reality must be faced by those currently defending Athwal: that The Left did not stitch this up, this has nothing to do with selections or factions and is solely about a case of sexual harassment between a victim and alleged perpetrator. It is unnerving that two years on from the #MeToo campaign we are still seeing those in our party peddling the same harmful myths regarding sexual harassment in attempts to protect the alleged perpetrators reputation and delegitimise the victim’s testimony. Victims should be commended for their courage to come forward and report, and should only be met with an outpouring of support and not a wall of suspicion.
Any Labour representatives seen to have been publicly engaging with such damaging conspiracies have shown themselves to be no ally to survivors of sexual harassment. No matter how high up in the party, no member or position holder should be adding to myths and harming victims of something as serious as sexual harassment for purely political reasons. Those doing so have brought our party into disrepute and have signalled to survivors that if they are ever in need, the belief and help they require will not be provided by those who have the power to provide. This is a damning message being sent to survivors and something we must resolve as soon as possible.
Coming to terms with the fact that someone you know has caused another person harm when you’ve only seen one side to them and the public image they portray can be confusing but just because you’ve not seen their actions, and find it difficult to believe, does not mean it did not happen or isn’t true. Shifting the focus onto the perpetrators good character allows them to convince others they aren’t capable of such a thing and throw people off the scent. They will argue that they are a good person and being labelled as someone who has committed sexual harassment will ruin their life or career, ignoring the harm they inflicted upon their victim. Having decent politics or being talented or charitable doesn’t mean that person did not commit sexual harassment, the two are not mutually exclusive. We have seen in many recent high-profile cases that show that you can in fact be a brilliant, upstanding member of society and also be capable of sexually harassing others. Outcomes of sexual harassment cases should be left to the NEC Sexual Harassment panel who have access to the report from independent investigators and evidence relating to the case, and not to those on social media who have neither.
An account called ‘Labour Against Abuse and Apologism’ have written a thread which includes screenshots of those who have engaged in apologism and dismissed the sexual harassment case as a political manouvre. https://twitter.com/LPAgainstAbuse/status/1188878664152375296
