Jewish Voice for Liberation (JVL), founded as Jewish Voice for Labour in 2017 for Jewish members of the Labour Party, is a British organisation that describes itself as "a Jewish-led organisation for members of the labour, trade union, socialist and progressive movements... internationalist, anti-Zionist and anti-racist".
Membership
JVL admits full membership only to Labour Party members who identify as Jewish. In August 2019, JVL said that it had full members in a quarter of constituency Labour parties. All other members are associate members without voting rights, as the constitution specifies that the organisation is led by Jewish people and only they can vote on its policies. JVL does not make promoting the centrality of Israel to Jewish life a condition of membership, which is a requirement for membership of the JLM. Committee member Ian Saville said: "There is no ideological test to join." Saville added that it is "a group for Jews in the Labour Party that would welcome all Jews, whatever their attitude to Israel".
Affiliations Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi said the organisation's "longer term aim" could be to affiliate to Labour as a socialist society. Several constituency Labour parties have affiliated to JVL, and the organisation has been endorsed by leaders of Labour Party affiliated trade unions, namely Len McCluskey, who is the general secretary of Unite the Union, and Tosh McDonald, the president of ASLEF. JVL is affiliated to both the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA). Additionally, the organisation formed a coalition with Red Labour and the Labour Representation Committee, both of which are members of the CLGA.
In December 2017, The Times of Israel wrote that JVL was closely linked to Free Speech on Israel (FSOI), which was founded in 2016 to "counter the manufactured moral panic over a supposed epidemic of anti-Semitism in the UK". FSOI opposes Zionism and the notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Wimborne-Idrissi said JVL and FSOI are "two separate organizations with different aims and objectives".
Wimborne-Idrissi, the founder of JVL and a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, was excluded from the Labour Party in December 2022.
Assessment Len McCluskey called the formation of JVL a "positive move forward". David Rosenberg, author and founding member of the Jewish Socialists' Group, described JVL as "a broader, more inclusive, more open-minded group—not fixated on defending Israel". Then Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said JVL are "committed to fighting anti-Semitism and making sure there is a Jewish voice in the party. We already have the Jewish Labour Movement. JVL was established last year and I think it is good that we have organisations within the party that are giving that voice to people." Writer Richard Seymour described the organisation as "rooted in radical and revolutionary internationalism". Stephen Sedley stated that "pro-Israeli groups such as the Jewish Labour Movement [are] seeking to drive out pro-Palestinian groups like the Jewish Voice for Labour by stigmatising them."
The organisation has attracted controversy, including from The Jewish Chronicle and The Times of Israel. The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) called its views an "extreme fringe". Jewish Leadership Council chairman Jonathan Goldstein said that JVL is "not representative of our community". Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, referred to JVL as "a tiny organisation whose odious views are representative of no-one but themselves". Jon Lansman, founder of Momentum, stated that JVL "is an organisation which is not just tiny but has no real connection with the Jewish community at all". Lansman added: "It doesn't represent the Jewish community in a way that JLM clearly does represent the Labour wing of the Jewish community." Luke Akehurst, director of We Believe in Israel and secretary of Labour First, has called for JVL to be proscribed.
History Launch Jewish Voice for Labour was inaugurated in July 2017, and Jenny Manson, an activist in Jews for Justice for Palestinians and former Labour councillor, was elected chair. The organisation was officially launched on 24 September 2017, on the second day of the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, with over 300 people in attendance according to JVL. The launch featured historian and Oxford University professor of international relations Avi Shlaim, former Court of Appeal judge Stephen Sedley, and the Jewish Socialists' Group's David Rosenberg.
JVL described itself as a "network for Jewish members of the Labour Party" that "stand for rights and justice for Jewish people everywhere and against wrongs and injustice to Palestinians and other oppressed people anywhere". The organisation's founding statement advocated "making the Labour Party an open, democratic and inclusive party, encouraging all ethnic groups and cultures to join and participate freely", and to support a commitment "to strengthen the party in its opposition to all forms of racism, including antisemitism". Its aims were set out in a statement of principles, which include a commitment "to strengthen the party in its opposition to all forms of racism, including antisemitism, to uphold the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage in solidarity activities", and "to oppose attempts to widen the definition of antisemitism beyond its meaning of hostility towards, or discrimination against, Jews as Jews".
Although JVL has been described as anti-Zionist, Manson said the organisation is not anti-Zionist, and stated that it was "an alternative voice for Jewish members of Labour" who do not support what she described as the "profoundly Zionist orientation" of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). JVL's information officer Jonathan Rosenhead said he shared the latter opinion. Glyn Secker, the organisation's secretary, wrote that JVL has "established a very different, authentic, radical, and socialist Jewish narrative to that promulgated by the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel". JVL's media officer Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi wrote that one of JVL's roles is "to clarify the distinction between Jew, Israeli and Zionist so that people are less likely to fall into antisemitic generalisation when talking about Israel's role in Palestine", to offer "an alternative to the JLM's pro-Israel agenda", and that the JLM does not have "the right to speak as the Jewish Labour Movement on behalf of all Jews in the Labour party". Co-chairs Jenny Manson and Leah Levane contend that the JLM cannot represent all Jewish Labour members when it is committed "to promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life", as well as the wider Jerusalem Programme of the World Zionist Organization.
The organisation's motto is "Always with the oppressed; never with the oppressor", which paraphrases a quote by Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Uprising.
JVL defended former London mayor Ken Livingstone, supported Jackie Walker, whom they described as being a victim of a "vituperative campaign... based on this sliver of quasi-fact", deemed accusations of antisemitism against Moshé Machover as "ill founded", opposed and condemned the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth, who they said was being "punished in advance of investigation and hearing of the case", welcomed the lifting of Derby North MP Chris Williamson's suspension, and called the National Executive Committee's ruling not to endorse him as a Labour candidate for the 2019 United Kingdom general election a "dangerous development for everyone who stands for justice for Palestinians and for democracy and freedom of expression in Britain, including within Labour".
2017 At the 2017 Labour Party Conference, JVL supported Hastings and Rye constituency Labour Party's proposal to change the Labour Party Rule Book to add a clause that makes it clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated, whilst clarifying that "hatred of Jews shall not be evidenced by non-abusive words or actions regarding Israel or Zionism that are part of legitimate political discourse." The organisation opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism being formally adopted by the Labour Party for disciplinary purposes at the party conference held in September, which it sees as "attempts to widen the definition of antisemitism beyond its meaning of hostility towards, or discrimination against, Jews as Jews". JVL saw the rule change, which was supported by Jeremy Corbyn, as an "anti-democratic restriction on political debate".
2018 JVL challenged "unjustified allegations of antisemitism" within the party, which they said were "used to undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership". In March, JVL organised a smaller counter-demonstration, attended by around 30 people according to The Independent, at a protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party, held in Parliament Square, London. In a statement, JVL said it was appalled by an open letter, issued jointly by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, which said to Labour MPs that there was a "repeated institutional failure" to properly address antisemitism. The organisation responded: "They do not represent us or the great majority of Jews in the party who share Jeremy Corbyn's vision for social justice and fairness. Jeremy's consistent commitment to anti-racism is all the more needed now." JVL added: "There is massively more antisemitism on the right of politics than on the left. Any organisation claiming to represent Jews in the Labour Party should be holding up for criticism, the senior ex adviser to the Prime Minister who recently used a national newspaper to dredge up antisemitic conspiracy theories, and the local Conservative party which issued a dogwhistle leaflet aiming to mobilise racism in their local election campaign. The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council have been silent on both. They have nothing to say either on the global rise of the far right and the toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric of the tabloid press. Jewish history surely gives us an imperative to speak out against both racism and fascism."
JVL chair Jenny Manson defended Corbyn on BBC's Daily Politics, saying Corbyn had taken "enormously strong action" to deal with the issue of antisemitism in the Labour Party. In April, Manson appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Referring to a survey conducted by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, she said: "Evidence, including very recent evidence, commissioned by a Jewish body suggests the very worst antisemitism is still on the right, on the far right and always has been." In the same month, JVL issued a statement saying they "strongly condemn the Israeli army's violent response to the Land Day demonstration in Gaza, killing 15 Palestinian civilians and wounding hundreds more", and called "for an unconditional end to Israel's inhuman siege of Gaza and its brutal occupation of the West Bank which has destroyed the lives of generations of Palestinians."