By Cumbria Left Horizons supporters.
The latest edition of the Cumbria News and Star (April 25) carries a report about Labour councillors banning a film in Carlisle about Jeremy Corbyn.
The film, The Big Lie, had been booked to be shown at the Harraby Community Centre in Carlisle and dozens of tickets had been sold well in advance. Unexpectedly, only weeks before the showing was due, the Community Centre contacted the organisers to say it had been cancelled, giving no reasons or even an apology for the inconvenience. The Centre did not offer an alternative booking date.
When the Cumbria News and Star looked into the issue, they discovered that Labour councillors for the area were on the trustees committee of the Community Centre and it would seem clear that they are behind the ban. In response to an approach from the newspaper, one of the Labour councillors refused to explain why he and the committee banned the showing of the film. “Why should we give a reason?”, he responded, “We don’t need to give a reason because we’re the committee and we decide what is shown”.
As the News and Star reported, “The film was produced by an award-winning filmmaker called Platform Films, and, according to a description by Star and Shadow Cinema, which is going to be screening the film on April 30 in Newcastle, ‘explores a dark and murky story of political deceit and outrageous antisemitic smears’”.
The content, as the film distributors have described it, “is based on the personal testimony of those interviewed and on credible, researched evidence” and it is because the right wing of the Labour Party actively connived with the Tory Press and BBC to undermine Corbyn that they do not want people to see this film. They are trying to cover up their own role in undermining the Labour leader.
“Like the Catholic Church banning books”
One of the organisers of the Carlisle film showing, Peter Doyle, told the News and Star, “The people who took that decision are like the Catholic Church banning books ages ago, and here we have a little film about Jeremy Corbyn and it’s banned in Carlisle.”
This is not the first time Labour’s right wing has banned the film and in Swansea, the Labour Party, incredibly, told their councillors they were not allowed to watch it. More recently, and perhaps even more significantly, the Labour Party seem to have leaned on the South West Region of the TUC to ban the showing of the film at the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in a few months’ time.
The Big Lie, gives an outline of the remorseless campaign set in motion to demonise Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader, from Summer 2015 onwards. Although Corbyn resigned as Labour leader after the election defeat of 2019, it is a campaign that has not ceased since.
No other leader of the Labour Party has ever faced such a tsunami of slanders, outright lies, distortions and abuse by the press and the BBC, as has Jeremy Corbyn. The abuse directed at Michael Foot doesn’t even come close.
The media and Labour’s right wing carried out a personal, character assassination, but their campaign was also aimed at discrediting what Corbyn stood for. Corbyn represented a challenge to the Establishment in a way that no Labour leader had been in modern times, and it was for that reason he was vilified so systematically.
Labour Party members, even those on the left, will not agree with everything that is said by interviewees in this film, some of whom have since stood against Labour in elections. But its broad message – the Big Lie – is unanswerable and it will strike a chord with all honest Labour members.
This crude attempts at censorship will not succeed in the long run. It might be banned here and there, but it will get through the gaps. In Carlisle, the organisers of the showing hope to find another venue fairly quickly, and when they do, it will probably have to be bigger than Harraby Community Centre. As Peter Doyle told Left Horizons, “for each one who bought a ticket originally there will now be two or three who want to see it”.
Postscript, added April 26:
A letter published in the Cumbria News and Star quotes the Governing Document of the Harraby Community Centre, from which the film showing was banned. The very first item says the aims of the Community Centre are “to promote the benefit of the inhabitants of the City of Carlisle and in particular in that area known as Harraby District, withouth distinction of sex, sexual orientation, race, political, religious or other opinions...” So the Centre trustees appear to have broken the very first of its aims.
Also, as the inset (left) shows, a new venue has been found for showing the film in Carlisle. We have it on good authority that because of the attempted censorship, tickets are selling like hot cakes.
Censorship by the National TUC has stopped SW TUC from showing the film at Tolpuddle Festival. This is a festival promoted by the SW TUC Secretary and has tremendous grassroots support putting the event on par with the Durham Miners Gala. So now we have authoritarian leadership – time for another bottom up movement. Momentum tried and were an excellent election machine but Labour Party Democracy was unfortunately not established.