by Tom Bower
At the beginning of 2019, nobody knew how long Theresa May would be able to survive as prime minister, what would follow the defeat of her deal in the ‘meaningful vote’ in mid-January, and whether the Commons would take control by voting for a second referendum and thereby delaying, or even overturning, Britain’s exit from the EU. Alternatively, faced by May’s resolution to crash out of the EU without a deal if her agreement was rejected, would the EU give way in the hope of avoiding chaos in Europe, and agree to a fixed time limit on the ‘backstop’?
The only certainty was Jeremy Corbyn’s patient expectation of the Tory Party’s self-destruction. On the edge of a historical breakthrough, he believed that he would witness the end of liberalism and capitalism in Britain, and lead his followers to the red dawn of a new era. If he was successful, future generations of British schoolchildren would learn to hail Corbyn, The Leader and The Hero.
Two years earlier, Corbyn had named Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ as his favourite poem. His enthusiasm for it was dubious, not least because Wilde himself was no believer in socialism.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day …
So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
Picture Section
Corbyn’s fifteen months in Jamaica in 1967–68 as an eighteen-year-old voluntary teacher forged his extreme left-wing ideas, but in the aftermath also raised questions about his credibility. On a minor matter, he wrongly claimed to have grown a beard while teaching on the island; and more important, his repeated claim to have stayed two years is untrue. He has never explained why he suddenly left Jamaica and what happened during the missing seven months.
His romance and marriage to postgraduate student and councillor Jane Chapman in 1974 ended in divorce. She blamed his misogyny, anti-feminism and unreasonable behaviour for the breakdown of their relationship. (Hornsey Journal)
Keith and Val Veness (far left and far right with Corbyn in Deal) formed a close political relationship with Corbyn after his return from Jamaica and have remained trusted friends. Nevertheless, Keith Veness is critical of Corbyn’s disorganisation and lack of financial competence. (Keith Veness)
Corbyn was first employed in London in 1973 by the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers, reporting to Alec Smith. (Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)
Smith denies Corbyn’s boast that he challenged employers who were ‘scumbags’ and ‘crooks’ to recover members’ unpaid wages. (Mary Evans/Marx Memorial Library)
Corbyn’s successful organisation of Hornsey Labour Party during the 1970s included acting as agent for Trotskyist Ted Knight (front row centre), the Labour candidate in the 1979 general election. Their extremist manifesto was the foundation of a lifelong alliance to turn Britain into a communist country. (Hornsey Journal)
As Hornsey Labour Party’s senior officer, contrary to the party’s rules, Corbyn welcomed Marxists as members. Among them was Tariq Ali, a charismatic intellectual. Three times Labour HQ rejected Ali’s application; and Knight was rejected by Hornsey’s electorate, and sent back to Lambeth, a corrupt borough. (Hornsey Journal)
Under the mentoring guidance of Tony Benn, a Labour government minister during the 1960s and 1970s, Corbyn feigned loyalty to the Labour Party although, as a communist, he opposed nearly all its policies, and repeatedly voted against the party as an MP. (Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Through London Labour Briefing, a Trotskyist group, Corbyn supported Ken Livingstone’s (left) coup in 1981 to seize control of the Greater London Council. Both actively supported Gerry Adams (centre), the Sinn Féin leader, and sympathised with the IRA’s violent campaign – a strange posture for Corbyn, a self-professed pacifist. (Paul Fievez/Daily Mail/REX/Shutterstock)
Ever since he arrived in London in 1972, Corbyn regularly joined demonstrations and trade union picket lines, and gave hundreds of speeches across the country to any group protesting against what he deemed to be injustice and inequality. (The Times/News Licensing)
Occasionally he was arrested – as in 1984 during a Trotsykist-organised picket against apartheid. (Rob Scott Photography)
Elected to the Commons in 1983, Corbyn forged a close relationship with Tony Banks (bottom), the left-wing MP for Newham, and was later joined by Diane Abbott, a former girlfriend, and Bernie Grant (centre), an aggressive ex-Haringey councillor who had persuaded Corbyn that Britain should not impose limits on immigration. (PA/PA/Archive/PA Photos)
In 1997 they were joined in the House of Commons by John McDonnell, an established Trotskyist who had struggled to get elected as an MP. (Tim Ireland/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images)
Corbyn’s second marriage in 1987 to Claudia Bracchitta, the daughter of Chilean exiles, started amid great romance and delivered three sons. But by 1996 Bracchitta was exasperated by Corbyn’s behaviour. (Daily Mail)
Claudia asked their mutual friend Reg Race, a former MP, to advise about her husband’s financial incompetence. Their chaotic, debt-ridden lifestyle ended their marriage rather than, as Corbyn and Bracchitta told the media, a dispute about their son’s education. (Central Press/Getty Images)
Corbyn overwhelmingly defeated his three Blairite opponents in the election for the Labour leadership, which was confirmed on 12 September 2015 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Westminster. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)
His victory was aided by Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum. (Lee Thomas/Alamy Stock Photo)
Corbyn’s relationship with his third wife, Laura Alvarez, who he married in 2013, appears to be more stable than his previous two marriages. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
To consolidate his authority across the Labour Party, Corbyn has appointed among his closest advisers in the leader’s politburo Seumas Milne, a committed Marxist. (Ben Cawthra)
And Andrew Fisher, a lifelong communist. (LNP)
As a pacifist, Corbyn claimed that he was seeking peace in the Middle East during his regular meetings with a succession of radical leaders and preachers. In 2013 he met Ibrahim Hewitt, a Hamas supporter, in Gaza. Hewitt approved stoning adulterers to death and lashing gay men.
In 2014 Corbyn laid a wreath at the ‘Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine’ in Tunis. Laid on the tombs of PLO terrorists, not their victims, the wreath’s ‘martyrs’ included the nearby grave of the mastermind of the murderous attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. ‘I was present when [the wreath] was laid,’ Corbyn later said. ‘I don’t think I was involved.’ He added, ‘I don’t share platforms with terrorists,’ belying the countless photographs of him alongside Irish, Palestinian and other supporters of violence. (Palestine Embassy, Tunis)
After the Muslim attacks on the United States in September 2001, Corbyn forged an alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain, an anti-Semitic group linked to Hamas. Corbyn made the Rabaa sign at an annual feast jointly hosted by the MAB.
In 2009 Corbyn invited Muslim extremist Dyab Abou Jahjah (centre) to Britain to publicly denounce Israel, America and Britain. Soon after their meeting in the Commons, Corbyn spoke about ‘our friends from Hezbollah and our friends from Hamas’, both terrorist groups promoting violence in the Middle East.
In 2000 Corbyn contributed money to Deir Yassin Remembered, a group organised by Paul Eisen, a Holocaust denier and anti-Zionist. Although Corbyn attended several DYR meetings with Eisen until 2013, after his election as Labour leader he would deny knowing Eisen.
Few wield more influence over Corbyn than Len McCluskey (right), the Unite trade union leader, waving the Palestinian flag at Labour’s 2018 conference
. McCluskey inserted into Corbyn’s office Unite’s chief of staff and lifelong communist Andrew Murray (left, also waving the flag) as an adviser. (The Times/News Licensing)
Karie Murphy, his partner and mother of his son, as office manager. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images)
Former partner Jennie Formby as Labour’s general secretary. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
Corbyn had a contradictory attitude towards Saddam Hussein – defending the dictator’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and opposing the destruction of his factories producing lethal weapons. However, his opposition to Tony Blair’s 2003 invasion of Iraq established his credibility beyond the far left. (Nigel R. Barklie/REX/Shutterstock)
At the invitation of Ihsan Qaesr (left), an exiled Kurdish activist living in Islington, Corbyn travelled in July 1991 to Iraqi Kurdistan soon after Saddam Hussein had killed many Kurds in a series of gas attacks. Despite showing Corbyn ‘unforgettable’ scenes of desperation, Qaesr recalled, ‘I was frustrated by Jeremy’s refusal to support military retaliation and the military defence of safe havens for the Kurds.’ (Keith Veness)
Corbyn questioned in 2012 the removal by Tower Hamlets council of ‘Freedom for Humanity’, a mural by Kalen Ockerman, an American artist. A snapshot glance revealed to Corbyn the familiar caricature of Jewish financiers, here playing Monopoly on a board supported by naked blacks – a Marxist depiction of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy against the world’s oppressed.
In 2018 anti-Semitism within Labour provoked an unprecedented protest in Parliament Square, with placards reading ‘Enough is Enough’. (Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
After Luciana Berger, a Jewish Labour MP, exposed Corbyn’s sympathetic protest to preserve Ockerman’s mural, she required police protection at the 2018 Labour conference from violent abuse by Corbyn’s supporters. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Louise Ellman MP’s lonely campaign after 2001 against the far left’s anti-Semitism resulted in gross intimidation by Corbynistas. (Rena Pearl/Alamy Stock Photo)
Ian Austin emerged in Westminster as a vociferous critic of Corbyn’s ostensible anti-Semitism. (Jeff Morgan 03/Alamy Stock Photo)
‘Beware the fury of a patient man,’ warned John Dryden, the seventeenth-century poet. Corbyn’s strategy in 2019 is patiently to await the Tory party’s self-destruction over Europe and enter Downing Street as Britain’s saviour. (James Noble)
Acknowledgements
This book was written more out of a mission than out of love. Faced by a warring Tory Party, Britain would normally switch to the opposition for a sane administration. Indeed, the country’s democracy requires regular changes of governing parties. Unusually, at the present time that automatic move has been stalled by Labour’s leader and his associates. Jeremy Corbyn’s lifelong rebellion arouses disquiet. That concern is magnified by his concealment about his past and his directive to close associates to refuse to help journalists and authors to understand it. Similar orders have been issued by John McDonnell and others in their tight circle. Tolerating a smokescreen put up by those who seek to become Britain’s rulers is unacceptable. I therefore set out to discover whether Corbyn’s own version of his life is accurate, and, equally important, what principles he would apply to what he and McDonnell have pledged themselves to achieve in government – ‘the irreversible change of Britain’.
Undoubtedly, many Britons share Corbyn’s ideals. They long to live in a truly socialist or communist society. Others, namely the floating voters and the young, may well be attracted by those values if only to be rid of the fractious Tories. The question is, what will be the real outcome of Labour’s government under Corbyn and McDonnell?
In setting out to discover the truth about Jeremy Corbyn, no author could succeed without the generous help of many people, especially those who have been close to him over the past fifty years. Fortunately, many of them gave me their insights and recalled their eyewitness experiences. As usual, so many wanted to remain off the record that I decided it was best not to reveal any sources. The text often makes the source clear, and on those occasions where it obfuscates the truth, that is intentional. I have also not acknowledged all those people individually here. For legal reasons, it was also deemed best not to reveal other sources, so unusually the book has no references.
Among those I can name, my principal debt is to Claudia Wordsworth for her remarkable research. Perceptive and brilliantly persistent, she delivered nuggets of gold. She is a true ally. I am also grateful for research to Janis Finch, Sarah Fletcher and Andy Kyle.
Among those who can be named for giving me help I am grateful to David Blackburn, Janet Daley, Liz Davies, Andrew Gilligan, Miriam Gross, Mark Hollingsworth, Andrew Hosken, Tim Rayment, David Rich, Daniela Richterova and Katerina Saturova.
My books always rely on the best lawyers, and for that I am indebted to Tom Jarvis and Simon Dowson-Collins at HarperCollins, and to David Hirst.
I owe a lot to Richard Cohen, a valuable partner, for his outstanding editing, and then to Robert Lacey, a legendary editor at HarperCollins, for his meticulous work. Also at HarperCollins I am grateful for the enthusiastic support of Arabella Pike, my editor, and Katherine Patrick, my publicist.
The steadfast rocks on whom I always depend are Jonathan Lloyd, my long-time agent at Curtis Brown, and the most important, Veronica. This book could not have been written without their support. I am really grateful.
I consulted many books, but the most relevant from which I drew information and have quoted are:
Tony Benn, Free at Last!: Diaries 1991–2001 (Hutchinson, 2002)
Tom Bower, Broken Vows: Tony Blair – The Tragedy of Power (Faber & Faber, 2016)
David Hirsh, Contemporary Left Antisemitism (Routledge, 2017)
Andrew Hosken, Ken: The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone (Arcadia, 2008)
Seumas Milne, The Revenge of History: The Battle for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2012)
Charles Moore, Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Vol. II – Everything She Wants (Penguin, 2015)
Rosa Prince, Comrade Corbyn: A Very Unlikely Coup – How Jeremy Corbyn Stormed to the Labour Leadership (Biteback, 2016; revised edn, 2018)
Dave Rich, The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism (Biteback, 2018)
Tim Shipman, All Out War: The Full Story of Brexit (William Collins, 2016)
Francis Wheen, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia (Fourth Estate, 2008)
Philip Ziegler, Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography (HarperPress, 2010)
Philip Ziegler, Wilson: The Authorised Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993)
Index
The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your ebook. You can use your ebook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.
9/11 attacks 128, 134, 154, 178, 237, 306, 323
Aarons, Derrick 10
Abbott, Diane 241, 259, 260, 264, 289; affair with Corbyn 51, 52, 57; background 51–2; character and description 52, 56; confrontation with Jane Chapman 56–7; description of Protestants in Northern Ireland 104; criticism of nursing staff 115; sends her child to private school 116; votes against Islamic ban 128; and 2010 Labour leadership contest 149; on fringe of Labour 150; limited support for 165; supports and defends Corbyn 176, 179, 190, 304; disagrees with McDonnell 203, 265; praises Mao Zedong 218; opposition to bombing 219–22; comment on Sadiq Khan 254; appointed shadow home secretary 292; gives Corbyn a year to turn party around 294; police-cost interview 301–2; increases majority at 2017 general election 312; comment on Grenfell 319; on anti-Semitism 325, 327–8
Abu Ghraib 137
Adams, Gerry 82, 104, 305; Before the Dawn 116–17
Afghanistan 105, 128, 129, 134, 145, 178
Ahmed, Imran 220, 257
Aitken, Jonathan 56
al-Assad, Bashar 158, 159, 178, 215, 224, 323
al-Qaeda 128
Al-Quds 231, 238
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al-Taher, Maher 192–3
Alami, Samar 133
Aleppo, Syria 215, 224
Alexander, Heidi 260, 266–7
Ali, Tariq 23, 30, 59, 60, 67–9, 72, 75, 99, 103, 134, 186; Trotsky for Beginners 59
Allawi, Ayad 138
Allcock, Tony 111
Allen, Jim 81
Allende, Salvador 13, 17, 22, 34, 69, 100, 124
Alvarez, Laura 161, 208, 209, 224–5, 256
Alvarez, Marcela 160
Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW) 22, 23, 26, 28, 32