The Forde report, an independent inquiry into Labour’s culture that was published in July 2022, found that the party was an “unwelcoming place for people of colour” and had a “toxic” culture of factional disputes between the party’s right and left.
In March 2023, Mr Forde gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he said that no one from Labour had been willing to discuss the recommendations further and highlighted concerns raised by ethnic minority politicians within Labour about racism in the party.
In response, it has now emerged that the Labour Party sent Mr Forde a robust legal letter, seen by The Independent, accusing him of acting against the party’s interests and advising him that it was “considering all of its options”.
Lawyers accused Mr Forde of having made “extensive negative and highly prejudicial comments” and questioned his professional conduct.
Speaking to The Independent this week, the respected barrister said: “I don’t know if it was an attempt to silence me. I mean, they’ve couched it carefully along the lines of ‘We’re reminding you of your professional duties,’ which I found mildly irritating because I am a regulatory lawyer, and I don’t like my professionalism or ethics being questioned … but I felt it was more.
He continued: “I’m a private individual; they can’t silence me. I fundamentally object to people saying to me, ‘You don’t know how to behave as a professional.’ I’m afraid that Black professionals get it all the time.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Labour attempted to gag a prominent Black barrister who authored a report that exposed a “hierarchy of racism” within the party, The Independent can reveal.
The Forde report made 165 recommendations, including the use of blind CVs in recruitment and changes to the complaints procedure, the majority of which the party says it has now implemented.
However, during his interview with Al Jazeera, the barrister claimed that Labour’s lack of debate and engagement over his findings at the time raised wider concerns.
The barrister also told the news outlet that “quite a high proportion of Black and Asian councillors or prospective MPs felt they’d been subjected to disciplinary action which had been deliberately timed to exclude them from qualifying processes or selection”.
Mish Rahman, a member of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), told The Independent he was disappointed by the letter to Mr Forde.
The leaked documents referred to in this report were made available by Paul Holden, an investigative journalist whose book will be published at the end of the year
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