Al JAZEERA INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
The leaked documents, obtained by Al Jazeera, reveal how party officials smear and intimidate rivals.
Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has obtained the largest leak in British political history, exposing how unelected officials undermined democracy within the Labour Party.
The leaked data comprises 500 gigabytes of documents, emails, video and audio files from the Labour Party dating from 1998 to 2021. The I-Unit will be releasing a series of reports on the leaked files over the coming week.
The data reveals how the party’s bureaucrats, whose nominal function is to serve the interests of the party, attempted to undermine members supportive of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader from 2015 to 2020.
Until his election as party leader in September 2015, Corbyn was a little-known figure in British politics, active in grassroots activism, from the anti-war movement to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
The first unequivocally socialist leader of the party since the 1980s, he rode a wave of popular discontent against the political establishment, standing on a platform of public ownership of key industries, a strengthened welfare state, and an end to the austerity measures imposed by the Conservative government at that time.
The Labour Files show, however, that inside the Labour Party discontent was brewing, leading to internal battles over which side of the party – the left-wing “Corbynites” or the pre-2015 centrists – would have control.
Party bureaucracy
The party bureaucracy, which Corbyn had inherited from his predecessors, played an important role in these battles.
At the time, that bureaucracy was led by Iain McNicol, who had been the general secretary of the Labour Party since 2011.
The Labour Files show how, before McNicol was replaced by Jennie Formby in 2018, the party was resistant to the political path Corbyn set.
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