Ken Livingstone to appear before Labour body in expulsion hearing

Ken Livingstone will appear before Labour’s most senior body on Thursday, which will rule on whether he will be expelled from the party for comments he made linking Adolf Hitler to support for Zionism.

The former mayor of London, who has been suspended from the party for 11 months, said he would present evidence to the national constitutional committee (NCC) to back up his claims in a series of TV and radio interviews that Hitler “was supporting Zionism” before he “went mad”.

In a statement before the hearing, Livingstone said he had not broken any Labour party rule and said he would blame expulsion on the political balance of the committee rather than his own conduct. His case will be presented by Michael Mansfield QC.

“I am being attacked by the right wing of the Labour party because I support Palestinian human rights and strongly back our leader, Jeremy Corbyn,” he said. “There is no real evidence against me, so hopefully the Labour panel will dismiss the charge against me. Only a biased and rigged jury could find against me.”

Labour’s national executive committee has referred the case to the NCC, the only body that can expel members. The meeting will be conducted in a private hearing of the NCC panel, despite calls from Livingstone for it to be made public.

Mansfield, who has previously represented families of victims at the Bloody Sunday inquiry and advised Corbyn during the legal challenge to the party’s leadership election in summer 2016, will present Livingstone’s case. His solicitor is Imran Khan, who has represented the family of Stephen Lawrence.

In a letter setting out the case against Livingstone, Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, said the former mayor must answer the charge that his conduct was “grossly detrimental” to the party, also citing his defence of Facebook posts by Bradford West MP Naz Shah.

Shah apologised for the posts which she admitted were antisemitic, suggesting transporting Jews from Israel to the United States. However, McNicol said, Livingstone then went on air to defend her and claimed the posts were not antisemitic.

“It is widely accepted and obvious that Ms Shah’s posts were antisemitic and offensive,” McNicol wrote. “Indeed, as stated above, Ms Shah herself accepted that her comments were antisemitic. So, too, did the spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn MP.”

McNicol said Livingstone’s comments about Hitler and Zionism had come unprompted to BBC London’s Vanessa Feltz. “You deliberately introduced Hitler’s alleged support for Zionism into the discussion with Ms Feltz, in the knowledge that, or reckless as to whether, it would cause offence to members of the Jewish community,” McNicol wrote.

Livingstone will also present five witness statements from Jewish Labour party members in his defence, all five of whom are involved in anti-Zionist and Palestinian rights activism.

LSE professor Jonathan Rosenhead, a proponent of a boycott of academic collaboration with Israeli universities, said Livingstone’s comments were “not perhaps expressed as elegantly as they might have been” but said he did not find them “to be in any way antisemitic or offensive”.

“It would be a tragic mistake if the Labour party were to find Ken Livingstone guilty of conduct prejudicial or detrimental to the party,” he went on.

Walter Wolfgang, a former member of Labour’s NEC, said in his statement: “As a Jewish member of the Labour party, who escaped Nazi Germany in 1937, I take the issue of antisemitism extremely seriously. Ken Livingstone has an outstanding record of fighting against racism and antisemitism. This hearing into Ken’s actions is a travesty.”

Another witness, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, the founding member of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, said Livingstone was being “pilloried because he is a prominent figure on the left of the Labour party”.

“Those who allege antisemitism against Ken Livingstone discredit the term,” she said. “His track record in public office is a clear testament to his commitment to supporting the Jewish community and fighting racism in all its forms, including antisemitism.”

The committee will also hear evidence from the chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, Jeremy Newmark, who will appear at the behest of Labour’s NEC and will be cross-examined by Livingstone’s team.

Newmark, who has also submitted written evidence, said he hoped the panel would be focused on the issue of disrepute, rather than Hitler and Zionism. “I hope the panel will keep the hearing consistent to the charge, rather than allow it to be a trial of history,” he said.

“I’ve agreed to give evidence because it is clear that whatever debate there may be about the facts or whether Ken’s statements were antisemitic, the question is whether he has brought the party into disrepute. And I know from the acres of press coverage and the response we get campaigning in Jewish areas, the remarks have been damaging.”

After the decision is made, the NCC may not issue any public statement but there is little practically that the committee can do to stop it being made public by the accused.

The committee, which has 11 members, is made up of representatives from trade unions, constituency labour parties, councillors and a socialist societies affiliated with Labour.

There is no comprehensive public list of the members, but the committee includes long-serving Labour councillors and activists, most of whom have been in the party for many decades from all sides of Labour’s political spectrum. Their identities are not widely publicised to avoid external pressure on decision-making.

The committee is currently chaired by Rose Burley, a councillor and Labour member for 52 years, who also presided over the expulsion of George Galloway. Three of them will be on the panel that decides Livingstone’s fate and a decision should be made as soon as the hearing ends or the following day.