Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Dame Margaret Hodge MP

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

NIALL PATERSON: The Labour party has been embroiled in yet another row about anti-Semitism after the BBC’s Panorama programme made allegations that the Leaders’ Office had interfered in disciplinary cases. One of the party’s most senior Jewish MPs, Dame Margaret Hodge, joins us now from Westminster. Ms Hodge, a very good morning to you.

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Good morning to you.

NP: You will of course have seen the BBC Panorama documentary and indeed the response from the Labour party itself, what were your thoughts on hearing that first person testimony from former Labour staffers?

DAME MARGARET HODGE: To be honest Niall it’s hard to express what I’m feeling because I was of course devastated by it and I don't know how often, how many people, how many incidents of anti-Semitism we have to have on our television screens or in our newspapers for the party leadership to stand up and really listen. There seems to be a dogged determination not to listen and I think my main feeling out of that programme when I watched it was how young everybody was. These are young committed idealistic Labour party activists and Labour party workers and they have been crushed by what has happened to them and the final thing I felt is that it was utterly deplorable and a complete abuse of power for the leadership’s reaction simply to try and pursue these people with lawyers and trying to shut them up. I used to Chair the Public Accounts Committee and in those days whistle blowers were really important in feeding all sorts of stuff to us and I well remember when we had the Luxembourg leaks about tax avoidance or the [??] leaks about tax avoidance in Switzerland, both Price Waterhouse Coopers and the HSBC responding by taking action against the whistle blowers, trying to shut them up. I never thought that my Labour party would do the same about whistle blowers trying to expose and deal with racism in the Labour party.

NP: And the response from the Labour party, specifically about those whistle blowers as you describe them, is to call them ‘disaffected staffers with political axes to grind’.

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Well I think that anybody that watched that programme would have seen that they are committed honest people with integrity who care about the Labour party and three of them in that programme had been driven into mental health conditions, one who had a breakdown, one who suffered from depression and one who had contemplated suicide. For the Labour party hierarchy, for the leadership of the Labour party to dismiss that as disaffected workers I think is intolerable and unacceptable. It’s a real abuse of power and I think the Labour party should really reflect and think again, stop this dogged determination to ignore, stop thinking they’ve got everything right and they don’t have to listen to the rest of us, stop being blinkered about it and pursuing the project at the expense of really fighting racism within the party.

NP: The Labour party itself is pretty categorical about this. They have doubled the number of staffers that are working on complaints, actually when you analyse the number of members that this refers to it’s an infinitesimally small percentage of the overall party, that some of these allegations have been politicised. What more could the party do?

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Say that last bit again.

NP: Some of the allegations have been publicised [sic], what more then given the doubling of the staffs, the tiny fraction of Labour members this references, what more can the party actually do?

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Now it’s about a year since I first confronted Jeremy Corbyn about the issue in the lobby of the House of Commons, it’s coming up to the anniversary of the year and the terrible truth is that in that year things have got worse and I can tell you from my own social media, you can see from … in the papers today you have another whistle blower, you have some more cases in the papers, day after day after day more cases are coming out. What can the Labour party do? Well it’s very easy, I think the first thing I would do is adopt the Alistair Campbell code of discipline, the Alistair Campbell disciplinary code, let’s call it that, so if there is a clear instance of anti-Semitism – and a lot of these are absolutely blatant and obvious – if that happens then you immediately expel and the individual would have the right of appeal, that’s the first thing I’d do. The second thing that I would do is immediately adopt a totally independent complaints mechanism because it is clear that the current mechanism has been abused, it’s been corrupted by political influence from the leaders’ office and from the leadership of the Labour party and it no longer holds good. Third, I would stop this action against the whistle blowers, that is outrageous, we cannot have that and fourth, I would do what Tom Watson has been calling for. We are in a really serious position, this is deeply damaging to Labour’s prospects, we are being investigated by the EHRC on the grounds of anti-Semitism and none of us know what the party is saying on all our behalves to the Commission so I would publish that as Tom Watson has been asking us to so we have real openness instead of secrecy and we transform that culture which at the moment I think is so deeply damaging to the Labour party. We used to be a tolerant party, we have become an intolerant party. We used to be open and democratic, we’ve now become secretive and we’ve become intimidating. We used to be anti-racist and we now align a culture of racism …

NP: Sorry to interrupt but on that point, you mentioned the encounter that you had with the leader of your party, you called him an anti-Semite and a racist, do you stand by that?

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Well to be honest, I’ve seen nothing in the past year that has caused me to change my mind, both in the incidence of anti-Semitism that have emerged and in the further details that we have about Jeremy Corbyn himself, the sort of people he’s met, the fact that he went to a wreath laying with some terrorists …

NP: Yet you are still in the party, you’re still in the party and if there were to be a snap election called in the next few weeks you presumably would be campaigning for the Labour party, for the man you described there as an anti-Semite and a racist to be the next Prime Minister.

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Listen, I’ve been a member of the Labour party for 57 years, it seems a heck of a long time and for 54 of those 57 years the party has been one of the most important things in my life and love of my life. I’ve had arguments in it, I’ve promoted in it, I’ve worked with it to pursue the values that I have. You don’t give up on a relationship just because there have been three or four years now of a period that I cannot support and I have felt hugely uncomfortable with. I do think we are at a tipping point, I do think if the leadership doesn’t start to listen now there will be many more people who will feel so uncomfortable within the Labour party that they can no longer remain within. I myself just feel that it’s like a marriage, I’ve been there for 57 years, 54 years of complete happiness and so I’m going to fight to keep that party …

NP: But there are many who would say that if you discover that your husband was an anti-Semite and a racist that might be grounds for divorce.

DAME MARGARET HODGE: What I hope to do is to ensure that it goes back to the values that brought me into the Labour party when I first joined. I myself am an immigrant and that has been a huge formative influence on my politics and my values so I joined the party because it was an anti-racist part, I joined the party because it was a tolerant party, I joined the party because it had an international solidarity as part of its values and I’m going to fight for those values. You try and bring that party back to the values not only for me but actually for my constituents who depend on everything the Labour party stands for for their quality of life and for greater equality and greater fairness in our society.

NP: I wonder if I may ask you about your colleague Tom Watson, a number of people have complained about his behaviour this week. Was it right for Tom Watson to criticise Jennie Formby whilst she was undergoing chemotherapy. We know what Len McClusky’s views are on all this so if we can keep it clean given that it’s not yet 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning.

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Listen we all want, we all wish Jennie Formby well, it’s terrible to have to undergo this treatment, I had a year caring for my husband when he was going through cancer as well so I know exactly what she’s going through but I have to say that there are more people responsible than Jennie Formby. There is the whole of the National Executive, there’s the leader of the party, there’s the Shadow Cabinet, it’s regretful that there isn’t a member of the Shadow Cabinet on your programme today to answer some of these issues. The buck doesn’t stop with one person and I actually applaud Tom Watson, he has been calling this out for a long time. He I think and I share this view that we are fighting for the soul of the Labour party and I’d just like to say one final thing – I am writing to the Labour party all the time about incidents of anti-Semitism and when Jennie was first ill I didn’t write to her, I wrote to somebody else and I got a response to that letter saying the matter has been referred to Jennie Formby. So you cannot, it is very difficult in this situation and I hope that others will now take the lead and leave her to cope with the treatment that she’s undergoing but you cannot fail to deal with this issue and Tom Watson is absolutely right to be calling this out, this is extremely serious and it goes to the heart of what the Labour party stands for and the values it promotes.

NP: Do you think then that the Labour party is structurally, institutionally anti-Semitic now?

DAME MARGARET HODGE: I think that there is a culture within the Labour party that has created a tolerance of this form of racism that has now spread through. You see too much of it, you see it at too high – whether you talk about Chris Williamson, whether you talk about Pete Lansman, whether you talk about the checks that were done or not done on our candidate in the Peterborough by-election, it is an embedded culture at the top but what I also know and see is thousands upon thousands of Labour party members who share the values that I am talking to you about this morning, who abhor the Jew hate that has now been allowed to come from the fringes into the mainstream of the party so I think that the Labour party, most people in the Labour party abhor what has been allowed to happen, what has been given permission to exist in the leadership cohort of the people at the moment running the Labour party.

NP: Dame Margaret Hodge, many thanks for joining us.

DAME MARGARET HODGE: Thank you.

NP: Of course we did contact the Labour party and invite them to respond to the latest allegations. They sent us a statement which says the following: “The Labour party takes all complaints of anti-Semitism extremely seriously and we are committed to challenging and campaigning against it in all its forms. All complaints about anti-Semitism are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken. The rate at which anti-Semitism cases are dealt with has increased more than fourfold since Jennie Formby became General Secretary.” That statement from the Labour party.