Joan Ryan / Photo courtesy of the European Leadership Network (ELNET) Former United Kingdom Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) Joan Ryan provided more in depth information about the antisemitism that plagued the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in a sit-down interview with the Journal.
Ryan, who currently serves as the UK Director for the European Leadership Network (ELNET), told the Journal that she first became involved with Labour as a college student and remained in the party for 40 years because she believed in the party’s principles of equality and fight against discrimination. During those 40 years, Ryan served in parliament from 1997-2010 and 2015-19. But she ultimately left the party in 2019 after seeing how rampant antisemitism had become in the party under Corbyn.
Ryan explained that the “root” of the Corbyn faction’s politics is that “they hate capitalism. They see capitalism as the root of all the world’s ills.” Consequently, they view the United States as “hypercapitalist” and Israel as “the colonialist power in the Middle East.” “They [the hard left] hate their own country too, and they’re doing well out of their own country,” Ryan said. She added: “We always dismissed that coterie of hard left as a bunch of cranks … we were wrong to do that. As soon as they got the opportunity they were watching for, they took advantage of that and the speed at which they took over the party at all levels when they grasped the leadership was absolutely frightening.”
Corbyn was able to get that opportunity thanks to changes in how the party elected its leadership. Right before Corbyn took over, the party moved from an Electoral College-esque system with “built-in checks and balances” between the MPs, members and trade unions toward a pure democracy of “one member, one vote.” Under the previous system, the MPs had the bigger say because the party leader had to be a current Labour MP and “nobody would know them like other MPs,” Ryan said. Additionally, the party changed the rules so anyone who wished to become a member needed to pay only £3 ($3.75) and immediately have the right to vote in the leadership contest, opening the door for “every single hard left group in the country” to infiltrate the party and install Corbyn as the leader.
“It’s an object lesson in how organized they are and how dangerous they can be,” Ryan said, adding that it’s also an important lesson about the necessity of checks and balances so “a democracy can retain its nature as a democracy.”
Ryan recalled how during Corbyn’s reign she received death threats as well as dead rats on her doorstep, but a Jewish MP in the party faced “constant abuse”––including from her fellow Labour members––which crossed a line for Ryan. Additionally, Labour meetings around the country featured Jews being called “Zios” and “persecutors of the Palestinians,” yet Corbyn “did nothing,” Ryan said. “Someone would say something outrageously antisemitic, and they’d be suspended, and the next thing you knew they’d very quietly just be allowed back in because that was just Jeremy Corbyn’s revolving door.”
In her dealings with Corbyn, Ryan alleged that she had to “ambush him” because he would constantly avoid meeting with her to discuss issues related to antisemitism and Israel. “We got to the point where we didn’t want to meet formally with him anymore because we had to draw a line,” she said. “You can’t speak to him. There’s no point. His actions speak louder than words. What we need to do is call him out.” Ultimately Ryan left the party so she could effectively call out Corbyn and drum up electoral opposition against him. Ryan knew that if she called for people to vote against Corbyn while being a Labour member, she would have been expelled from the party and then her criticism would be dismissed as having an axe to grind against Corbyn.
Whenever people ask Ryan if Corbyn is an antisemite, she replies: “I don’t know what’s in his heart but let’s judge him by his actions. He tells us Hezbollah and Hamas are his friends. He lays a wreath on the grave of the man who organized the murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich. He works for [the Iranian state-run] Press TV and takes payment from them, and he will do nothing to stand up to this virus [of antisemitism] that he has allowed to race through our party.”
But what particularly irked Ryan was seeing that Labour MPs who had provided support for the Jewish community suddenly “kept their heads down” under Corbyn’s reign. “You don’t only call out the antisemites, you call out those who look the other way as well,” Ryan said. She also learned that “you couldn’t fight antisemitism if you didn’t fight anti-Zionism,” as groups that are purportedly committed to fighting antisemitism in Labour didn’t speak up against the antisemitism cloaked as anti-Zionism in the party. Such condemnations were left to Ryan as the head of Labour Friends of Israel and two other MPs. “It’s a lonely place, but I never regretted it,” Ryan said.
She did praise current Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer for making “a big step forward” toward weeding out antisemitism in the party. Ryan pointed to his “profound apology to the Jewish community,” calling out anti-Zionism as antisemitism, expressing opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and acknowledging that it’s an ongoing process to ameliorate the party’s antisemitism problem. Additionally, Starmer accepted all of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s recommendations to fix the party, including a new disciplinary process.
Ryan is not Jewish; she credits her affinity to fight against antisemitism to her Irish parents, who faced discrimination in England and raised Ryan and her three sisters to make a “positive difference” in the world. Ryan also recalled interviewing Holocaust survivors in the 1980s through her work as a freelancer for the Imperial War Museum in London. “That kinda stayed with me really,” she said. “The horror of what happened to those people, the loss of their families and the tragedy of that, and also just understanding that this is where this kind of hatred can lead to. It didn’t change my values and principles, but it perhaps gave me this understanding of antisemitism as racism that I think people don’t always have and what the outcome of that can be, and why we all need to stand up to it.” Ryan added that “antisemitism isn’t just an issue for Jews to deal with, it damages all of us. It rots our democracies.”
She called anti-Zionism “the new gateway into antisemitism.” “Demonizing and delegitimizing Israel, it’s wrong,” Ryan said. “It is the only democracy in the Middle East. It deserves and is entitled to our support. And if we want to play our role in helping to support peace in the Middle East, then I think the Abraham Accords is the greatest initiative we’ve seen in a long time.” Ryan also called for standing up to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “BDS is making no difference in the UK in terms of trade. Trade between Israel and the UK is absolutely blossoming. But I don’t think that’s it’s purpose. I think what BDS is doing on campuses and trade unions is poisoning the hearts and minds of young people.”
Ryan said “there are parallels” between Corbyn and The Squad in Congress and praised Democratic Majority for Israel for speaking out against The Squad. “That kind of development within the Democrats is very, very important,” she said.
This article has been updated.
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