Labour Against Antisemitism director and friend attack me
[Facebook post begins here:] I have told my MP that following a post on X by the celebrated journalist Nicole Lampert, complaining that someone had graffiti'd the road surface with a pro-Palestinian slogan, the great Zionist and director of Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS), Jonathan Glass, made a gag suggesting that I could have done it (fair enough) but then pointed out that the photo was of my road.
The reason why I have notified my MP about this is because the great Zionist Jonathan Glass and the celebrated journalist Nicole Lampert have previous on this. Nicole for example has drawn attention to the fact that I live near her (presumably this is of huge interest to Zionists. Is there a sub-text to do with the fact that neither of us live in Israel? Perhaps not. )And Nicole, I've been told, 'liked' a tweet which said (hysterically funny this one) that if I had been around in Amsterdam during the Second World War, I would have betrayed Anne Frank and her family. Nicole, as I say, is a celebrated journalist.
Jonathan deserves to be more famous than he is but maybe his day will come now that Netanyahu is taking over Gaza. (That was a big surprise, wasn't it?). Jonathan started noticing me some years ago and made it part of his job to repeatedly talk about or identify where I live (with my family), repeat his estimations of the purported value of our house, allege that our house was largely empty, that he could pop round with some chicken soup (not at all threatening), and that when he saw me in the street, he 'booed' (grrrrrr!!!) and that if his wife hadn't been with him, he didn't know what he would have done. Are there awards for Zionists who say this sort of thing about anti-Zionists? Let's hope so.
Jonathan received a 'cease and desist' letter from my lawyer, which he took as a bit of comedy and indicated that he wouldn't and couldn't hurt a fly. At the time, as my health had turned me into something less powerful than a fly, this wasn't very reassuring. Nevertheless, good Jonathan carried on, regularly talking about our house, and even suggested that when I was going to do a signing at the Muswell Hill Children's Bookshop ('children's', note) he could leaflet the signing. What with? Why? The good news from Israel, presumably?
So there are various ways of fighting for ones' beliefs. Good Jonathan has decided that one way is to keep up a stream of gags (?) about where I live and how he could get to know me better, as it were.
Let's see what my MP makes of it.
UPDATE ON THIS: I'm most most grateful to my MP for helping me alert the police to Mr Glass's behaviour and, as far as I understand it, the great Mr Glass has enjoyed hosting a visit from a police officer who suggested that perhaps Mr Glass should not keep mentioning where I live or making any kind of threat towards me.
LAAS directors and friends had tried some tactics against me before - eg with 'The Bear Hunt tweet'.
In my last post (above) , I outlined the behaviour of the wise and talented Jonathan Glass with a cameo appearance from the celebrated journalist Nicole Lampert. What I failed to do was provide some context. Can I refer you to Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS)?
Though I have never been in the Labour Party, my support for Jeremy Corbyn was good enough for LAAS to identify me as a danger to Jews. Several directors of LAAS got to work. One was appalled that I was on Radio 4 and urged the BBC to no platform the 'antisemitism-denier' and 'racist', Michael Rosen. That tweet seemed to me (my honest opinion) to be approved of by Mr Myerson KC (then QC) in his tweet-reply saying that he thought I 'should be placed outside these conversations' [on the radio] on account of my political views (which he got slightly wrong.) Then up popped the great Jonathan Glass, also an LAAS director with the activity I’ve outlined in the previous post. Then this was followed up with a third LAAS director, Pete Newbon, posting a photoshopped pic of Corbyn reading ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ to some children, with the book changed to show it as if Corbyn was reading ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ - a document that was legendarily horrific in my home when I was growing up, for being at the heart and origins of Nazism, so much so that Hitler mentions it in 'Mein Kampf'. I was disgusted and horrified to see it on the book that Helen Oxenbury and I created with Walker Books.
Accompanying this image was a version of some of the words from the book. I have discovered through Subject Access Request (a bit like FOI) and in the legal Claim made against me by Pete Newbon that the new words in the 'Bear Hunt tweet' were what Newbon himself described as a ‘parody’ a ‘pastiche’ a ‘corruption’ of my words but, more importantly that he said he had ‘echoed’ my words on account of the use I had once made by writing parody of the Bear Hunt - for ‘political purposes’. In other words, I had once made a parody of my own words in order to support Corbyn. Newbon objected politically to this. So his words in the Bear Hunt tweet were meant by him to be a parody of my parody! To be clear, it's not me saying this. This is what Pete Newbon says in his own documents (again: 'parody', 'pastiche', 'corruption' and 'echoed' my 'use') In other words, I was part of the target of the 'Bear Hunt tweet' as I call it. Why am I saying this? Because 100s of people have claimed that I was not targeted in the Bear Hunt tweet. Repeat: Mr Newbon makes clear in these documents that I was a target.
My response to the Bear Hunt Tweet
I responded by tweeting 'This is a loathsome and antisemitic thing to do' and directed a tweet at Mr Newbon's university asking them if he was employed by them. In so doing, I hoped that this would bring matters to a head and that the university (or mine, or both) would convene some kind of conversation or mediation to deal with the fact that someone who was in the broadest sense a colleague (a university teacher of literature) had posted something which was in my opinion, gross and offensive.
Independently and prior to me, many people had already been in touch with Mr Newbon's university to complain about the Bear Hunt tweet and this went on for something like 24 hours before I got to see the Bear Hunt tweet and made my comment. In the meantime, Pete Newbon had taken himself off Twitter (now X), so by the time I got round to trying to find him, I couldn't approach him directly through Twitter.
By the way, some people have questioned my right to have made the comment that I did ('loathsome and antisemitic thing to do') or that, of course, I was wrong to have that view. I'll say here that I absolutely did have that right. It was an opinion. And in that I have the backing of the so-called Macpherson Principle which says that at the very least, when someone from a marginalised group voices an example of discrimination or racism, they should be taken seriously.
Strangely, some people who loudly voice that view when they perceive that Jews are not listened to, have denied me my right to have had that view when I looked at the Bear Hunt tweet - and that was before I became aware that the caption was at least in part directed at me too.
In the end, whether the Bear Hunt tweet was or was not 'an antisemitic thing to do' is no longer material. The key point is that I should have been free to have made that comment. Even so, I still do think publishing that image - which to me is akin to publishing a daubing of a swastika on one of my books - is an antisemitic thing to do. Not necessarily the act of an antisemite. Simply and only what I said it was: an antisemitic act. After all, Mr Newbon (and his co-directors of LAAS) knew very well that I'm Jewish and that their critque of me is precisely that I'm the wrong kind of Jew. So photoshopping one of my books with one of the most notorious antisemitic documents of all time, seems pretty much like making an antisemitic comment about a Jew (me).
The effect of my notifying the university was indeed that they convened mediation, informed me that Mr Newbon was writing an apology but then a day or so later, suddenly also revealed that he had withdrawn that apology. I replied by saying that as far as I was concerned the matter was over. Please remember this! The whole matter could have ended there.
A few weeks later I received notification from Mr Newbon and his solicitor that 'litigation' against me had begun on the grounds that I had libelled Mr Newbon.
The motive, the university and Professor David Hirsh
Let me turn now to Mr Newbon's disciplinary hearings at the university, in particular the one that addressed the fact that Mr Newbon had tweeted the Bear Hunt tweet.
Mr Newbon presented a document for the hearing that he faced. There are screeds of stuff explaining in this document, what is wrong with my politics. In other words, Mr Newbon's motive for doing the 'Bear Hunt tweet is explained, and described over and over again. Rather absurdly, Mr Newbon thought that he could explain to a university hearing that he hadn't attacked Rosen but to do so, he needed to...er...attack Rosen - and attack Rosen at great length with what seems to have been a many-clause tirade, aided by Professor David Hirsh. They both seemed to have missed the point that the hearing was over a breach in the university's social media policy but they thought that the best way to defend against that accusation was to repeat and enlarge an attack on me - which was what had got Mr Newbon in trouble with his university in the first place. Surprise: it failed. It failed because Mr Newbon was indeed in breach of the university's social media policy - for the third time, actually. The university had tried very nicely several times to tell him to stop tweeting stuff that was in ...er... breach of the social media policy before. Of course, all he needed to have done was take the university's name off his profile, and then he wouldn't have been in breach. The huge punishment (irony alert) he got from the university, that Prof Hirsh has complained about in his articles, was that Mr Newbon should just stop being in...er...breach of the university's social media policy for one year. Obvs equivalent to a lifetime in the Scrubs, I'd say.
So, to sum this up: Prof Hirsh tried to help someone 'prove' that he wasn't attacking me, by helping to produce (so he says) ...er...many paragraphs that were...er...attacking me. In fact, this actually and surprisingly proved to be...er.... ineffectual.
Note: some people have claimed that the university dismissed my claim that the Bear Hunt tweet was antisemitic. Actually, it's more nuanced than that. What the university actually did was lay to one side the question of whether the Bear Hunt tweet was or was not antisemitic. Their sole concern was their reputation and the extra use of their time in having to deal with the tweet.
Professor David Hirsh and I are colleagues at Goldsmiths University of London and Professor Hirsh is the CEO of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. He has written two articles in honour of Mr Newbon in which several paragraphs in both describe what is wrong with my politics and how I 'mobilise my Jewishness' for what he thinks are wrong or even antisemitic reasons. You might wonder why there are several paragraphs about me in these articles, one of which is an academic tribute-obituary to Pete Newbon and the other is the document that accompanies the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism's Pete Newbon Award. At least one of these articles contains the disclaimer that the article does not seek to find 'cause' for Pete Newbon's death. This means that any linkage or connection that anyone might make between a hostile account of me, and Pete Newbon's death, cannot possibly be taken to be a cause. If you were in any way of a sceptical frame of mind, you might ask yourself, 'Then why would a tribute to someone, contain nearly 2000 words of attack about someone else?' Only Professor Hirsh would know the answer to that question.
In my view, the views that Professor Hirsh expresses are just a recycled version of the 'wrong kind of Jew' thesis, or the 'good Jew-bad Jew' thesis in which Professor Hirsh, Mr Newbon, LAAS are the good Jews and Rosen and some others (who are generally dismissed as 'cranks' or 'AsAJews' ) are the bad Jews. Prof Hirsh has also platformed a Rabbi on YouTube who, my lawyer tells me, implies in her lovely talk that I'm in part responsible for ('contributed to..') the death of Mr Newbon. I thought Rabbis didn't write that sort of thing and that they thought carefully about what the Samaritans say about such matters. I have written to the good Rabbi. She disagrees with me.
Again, though you might ask, why is Professor Hirsh doing this? Why if he does not seek to find 'cause' for someone's death, does he platform on YouTube someone who does indeed detail what she imagines are the factors that 'contributed to' someone's death?
Mr Myerson KC has also written that my use of a children's book 'led to' 'tragedy'. Not 'caused', note, 'led to'. Well, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 'led to' me getting Covid. Everything is linked to everything else. The good Mr Myerson was of course not making any kind of allegation in that tweet and I admire him hugely.
It may interest people who are not Jewish that for hundreds of years some Jews have been fond of accusing other Jews of not being Jewish enough or for being 'wrong' Jews. An outsider looking in on this would find that even as one Jewish person accuses another of not being Jewish enough, the accusers themselves often get accused of the same thing! One example: someone who has already been mentioned on this blog is fond of identifying people as not being Jewish enough but then on one occasion someone accused him of not being Jewish enough because he married a non-Jewish woman who then converted! My view of all this is that accusing people of not being Jewish enough is nearly always a way of trying to delegitimise what someone thinks, says or believes but doing so on phony ethno-religious grounds.
Big irony in the 'who's a Jew?' matter: Newbon or Rosen?
One of the biggest ironies in the middle of this series of events was me finding out that people antagonistic to me, claim that I wasn't 'really' Jewish while Mr Newbon, whose claims to be Jewish rested entirely on the fact that he had just one Jewish grandparent (his grandmother) but was always described as Jewish. His lack of belief, lack of observance, lack of a Jewish marriage and lack of participation in Jewish events (other than attacking people for their alleged antisemitism), were all put to one side by those claiming he's Jewish. It seems that in some circles, you can become Jewish if you have one Jewish grandparent and you produce a lot of hostile tweets about antisemitism on social media. To be clear, I am utterly agnostic about this matter. If people want to self-identify as Jewish, it's fine by me. It's never me who acts as a gatekeeper on this matter, policing other people's Jewishness or lack of it.
Here's an illustration of how on social media, Pete Newbon is described as unequivocally Jewish and I am not. This is Grok (X's information AI) describing the situation:
To clarify: Pete Newbon, a Jewish academic, shared a satirical edit of an image showing Jeremy Corbyn reading Michael Rosen's "We're Going on a Bear Hunt," altered to critique Corbyn's handling of antisemitism by swapping the book for "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and adding mocking text. Rosen condemned it as antisemitic. Newbon tragically died by suicide in 2022 amid backlash. It was an image alteration, not defacement of Rosen's book. Facts matter over labels.
(This is all for context and as you'll see there, one person is described as a 'Jewish academic' and another (me) is not. For information, my qualifications and position at a university were identifical if not 'higher' up the academic ladder that Pete Newbon's, with me being a prof and all that. And on 'background' grounds, I am more Jewish - all my forebears are Jews! In short, I am a 'Jewish academic' but not in the eyes of Grok - whatever that means! I really don't like messing in this kind of territory but if others (and AI!) want to go there, then I'm OK with slugging it out there. )
Political not personal
This brings us to the heart of the matter: this jolly, laughter-full stuff is political, channelled through the personal via all the channels I've mentioned above: ie to do with a) me being on the radio talking about language, b) living in a house (how dare I ?!) , c) doing children’s book signings and events - one of LAAS’s former consultants turned up to two of these Jewish children's events and heckled me, picketed me and had to be escorted from the premises (with a police number attached to the event) - and, as some have tried, d) even accusing me of lying about how the book ‘We're Going on a Bear Hunt’ came about.
[see link at bottom of this page to an earlier blog I did on the charade that has gone on about people accusing me of not being honest in how 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' came to be written!]
Pete Newbon decides to sue me while being sued himself
What happened next is a long story involving me being sued, even as the person (Pete Newbon) suing me was being sued himself! He was being sued for having libelled and endangered someone on account of Pete Newbon's accusation that this person was a 'freak'. (Also part of the activity of a director of LAAS, it would seem!) Apparently it was OK to suggest in a tweet, (for political reasons!) that someone was a 'freak' and - further in the libellous tweet - that this 'freak' was inappropriately interested in children! (Is this really what an outfit called Labour Against Antisemitism regard as 'work'?)
Important note, that case was won by the person described as a 'freak'. Interestingly, though the case received a lot of publicity in the lead-up, but when it was over, no press covered it. It's almost as if those on the LAAS side of things got good publicity when they were accusing but when they lost this one, no one was interested. Why? I don't know.
The person doing the suing and being sued (Pete Newbon) took his own life. This was and still is a tragedy for all concerned. I have read the many articles written by Pete Newbon's widow and these are, as you might expect, deeply affecting. I regret that anyone takes their own life, and in this series of events, I very much regret that it was someone who for a short while engaged with me in an open and honest way. What happened after that was highly antagonistic and destructive.
Directly following Pete Newbon's death, many folks who support LAAS leapt into action, ignored Samaritans' guidelines on such matters (as did the good Rabbi platformed by Professor Hirsh, as related above) , and said that the death was ‘caused’ by me or by the person who was libelled and endangered with the 'freak' accusation, or that we had 'contributed to' this tragedy. It is extraordinary and distasteful how people with no knowledge of trauma feel so free to jump onto social media and talk so ignorantly about 'causes'. To be fair to Professor Hirsh, he described the causes of suicide as 'multiple, complex and unknowable'. If only everyone followed that thought!
The Inquest and the Inquest ignored
Please note: the inquest made no linkages, no connections, said no such thing by way of suggesting that either I or the person accused of being a 'freak' was a cause, So every comment that claims that the person accused of being a 'freak' or me was a 'cause' or implies we are a 'cause' or even partly a cause, is telling a lie and it's defamatory, so my lawyer tells me. That's why people who say this kind of stuff on social media now, nearly always do it anonymously or from a foreign country! Neat. Safe.
(Brief legal note: Coroners and Inquests theoretically do not state causes for suicide but in actual fact often provide circumstantial narratives - often very lengthy ones - that do in fact make strong suggestion of a cause. You may remember, for example, the sad story of the headteacher who took her own life after an Ofsted Report, or the school student who received many hostile texts on her phone. )
Once again, the personal was used to further the political. People who claim to have high motives and high ideals seem to have no qualms about claiming that they know the nature of people’s personal lives (in this case, Mr Newbon's personal life) to such a detailed extent that they can say that x caused y. But of course they don’t know that, which is precisely why the Samaritans ask people to not make such statements. And their story(or narrative) has been fatally undermined by facts that I won’t go into just now because…they are personal (not mine, I hasten to add!), though they have been posted on social media and are in the public domain. And, of course, that’s not why antagonistic people are doing it! The purpose of pointing the finger of blame at me and the other person being libelled is political and that purpose was at one stage to do anything to kick away the pillars of support for Corbyn, and right now to defend Israel’s genocide and land grab. It goes on and on and on.
PS. I'll leave you to imagine how much it cost me to defend an 'action' (being sued) over a 7 month period of many, many pointless letters from the suers, which avoided the crucial matter that the person suing me had a) written an apology for having made the 'Bear Hunt tweet' and secondly b) had aborted mediation!
I'll also leave you to speculate what a court would likely make of someone suing another over a document (tweet) that they had already apologised for. The letter of apology would have come to the court for all to see. Also indeed, that the suer (Pete Newbon) had aborted mediation. For reference, courts don't like it if someone sues, having walked away from mediation. (I had accepted that Mr Newbon had walked away from mediation, and I was content to drop the matter, but Mr Newbon chose to sue instead.)
If it had gone to trial, previous activity would have come to light
It was also likely that in court, some previous activity would have come to light. That's what happens in defamation trials. That's how defendants defend. So, for example, as Professor David Hirsh and others point out, Pete Newbon was an active tweeter and I have personal testimony from two academics who were targeted by Mr Newbon. In one of these, the academic's colleges were approached by Mr Newbon, with the result that that academic was faced with an inquiry and his job was on the line - long before the Bear Hunt tweet. In the other case, also before the Bear Hunt tweet, Mr Newbon threatened legal action against an academic in the midst of a private email correspondence - legal action which could have endangered that academic's job too. There is also the matter of the so-called 'University Antisemitism Map'. This is an anonymous website which lists academics, their exact places of work (with maps) and makes anonymous accusations that these academics are antisemites. A little research shows that Pete Newbon was, at the very least, engaging with this site, a site which - my personal opinion - could have enabled harassment and vigilantism.
Who advised Pete Newbon? And why?
I also wonder about who advised Mr Newbon to withdraw his apology (which would have ended the whole matter, as I made clear in mediation), and who followed that up with the highly risky idea of suing me? Why would someone advise those things? What was the purpose of them? I'm going to suggest that the reason was political - that is, the priority at the time for LAAS directors was a) to harass (as with Jonathan Glass), b) to cancel (as with the tweet trying to get me taken off the BBC) and c) to defeat and bankrupt people (as with suing me) who supported Corbyn.
But perhaps the intention never was for the case to come to court?
Perhaps the intention was for me to give in and pay out? And it was only when we asked for 'evidence' for some of the claims made in the legal claim that it became clear that a) we were prepared to go to trial and b) that key documents would reveal i) the apology, ii) the aborted mediation, iii) the political intention and motive for the Bear Hunt Tweet, iv) the previous history of disciplinary action taken by the university, v) the clashes with other academics, vi) the contact made with academics' universities (as employers of alleged antisemites), vii) the possible engagement with the harassing 'University Antisemitism Map', viii) the pattern of harassment from other directors of LAAS (who were mentioned in the Particulars of Claim, so this could have been brought to court) AND ix) of course the 'freak' case (with the accusation of inappropriate behaviour towards images of children) which at that time was secret and was not a good case if what you have to go to court for is to defend your reputation! It was a disgusting thing to have accused someone of. Not good for your reputation with it coming up in a trial that you said that someone had an inappropriate interest in children and that this was a lie. These would all have come to light in a trial.
I only mention this because both the great Jonathan Glass and the expert on antisemitism Professor David Hirsh have both claimed that Mr Newbon would have won the case against me.
If we want to talk legal stuff, I'm happy to do it. After all, the legal was, it seems, being used for the political, was it not? Is it OK to use the legal system for political reasons? I dunno. But it looks at least a bit as if it's OK. Apparently.
What about the cost for Pete Newbon?
And I haven't even begun to talk about the potential cost it would have been like for Mr Newbon to go to court twice, or lose twice or to imagine you might lose twice. Did he realise what this cost would be? Had he been told by his legal team? Had he shared the fact that he was involved in two cases with anyone, other than his legal team? If not, why would he be keeping it secret? What damage did he think might occur if people other than his legal team would know about these two cases? When my case first hit the press, there was no mention of the two cases running at the same time. Why not?
UPDATE: These are rhetorical questions for which there are now answers online in the public domain. In short, Pete Newbon was keeping both my case and the 'freak' case secret from his family. At one point, he even assured his family that he had dropped the case against Rosen even as he was ratcheting it up to the serious level of issuing the Particulars of Claim against me. I can't emphasise enough what a serious thing it is to issue a Particulars of Claim against someone. It invites the defendant (me in this example) to say back to the issuer of the Claim, 'Bring it on. I'll defend and go to trial.' - at enormous financial and emotional risk to the claimant (Pete Newbon in this example) and their family. And, for reasons I know not, Pete Newbon was keeping this risk secret from his family. I think we can guess that if he was keeping it secret, he would also have dreaded it coming to light - as it was certainly going to be so.
Just to cut this bit short: to take part in cases that you lose, costs 100s of thousands of pounds , even if your solicitor is acting on a 'no win no fee' basis or something similar. Hundreds of thousands of pounds! Even if you win, you can still come out of a case seriously out of pocket. Remember, one of those cases was going to be a loser for Mr Newbon - the one about someone being a 'freak'. I think I've given enough facts here to show that my case would have been a loser for him too. And, what's more, our side (my solicitor and me) might have 'cross-claimed'! Namely that I was defamed in the first place. Or we might have defended on the basis of what's called 'reply to attack' and/or that my comments were 'honest opinion' and/or that they were in the 'public interest'... but hey, all this legal stuff directed at me was in a good cause, apparently. The LAAS cause. It was, as I very boringly keep saying, political not personal.
[Here's the link to the side-story of how people have tried to 'reveal the truth' (lols) about the 'true' origins of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' - also in the service of this great cause....(er...what cause?). In short, it's an ignorant and silly smear. Just paste this link into your browser.
https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-true-story-of-making-of-book-of.html ]
Reaction to these posts above.
There's been some reaction to my blog about the three directors of Labour Against Antisemitism. I respond below!
Very nearly everyone has been helpful and supportive. One comment caught my eye. Essentially, it casts doubt on my main argument, which was that the attacks on me are political.
So, in case I haven't proved the point, I'll tell this bit of the story.
When I received my first 'letter before action' in the libel case brought by one of the directors of Labour Against Antisemitism (Pete Newbon), it identified me as a Corbyn supporter. This was in the letter.
This is at best a bit bizarre. It immediately signalled the political motive for suing me. Put it this way, a Claimant's best tack in their first 'letter before action' is to be surgical about what they think that the person who they're suing (the 'Defendant') has done that is libellous and damaging. Ideally, a Claimant doesn't usually want to give away anything that might reveal any motive for suing other than there is a factual libel and 'serious harm' done as a result of that libel - something along the lines of: 'You said x, it was not true, my client has suffered loss of reputation as a result. And here's the evidence for why we think this.'
Taking a sideswipe at what they might think of the person they're suing, is probably not a great move as it might alert a judge to a dubious motive. Of interest to me, though here is that there is an allusion to me being a supporter of Corbyn. It shouts out, 'We're doing this for political reasons, it's your politics that we dislike.'
OK, that's the 'letter before action'. Now for the Particulars of Claim. This is the document a Claimant sends that details exactly what they're suing you for. It also signals that they're serious about taking this whole thing to court. It arrived some 7 months or so after that first 'letter before action'.
(Note: when people leap to blaming me for what tragically happened in this case, they always leave out this time lapse. A lot of things can happen - and did - in 7 months.)
You might think that after 7 months or so of what I'll call pointless correspondence between Pete Newbon and me, the people assembling this claim would have weeded out this giveaway of their motive for suing - that is their dislike of my politics.
Digression
[Please also note that it wasn't me prolonging what I'll call the 'Bear Hunt Tweet Affair'. If, as some have suggested, that the flak from Mr Newbon's Bear Hunt Tweet was difficult for him, then you might ask, 'Why prolong the difficulty? Why introduce the stress and expense of litigation (legal correspondence) when the whole thing had been on the verge of being solved with mediation? And why keep the whole thing secret from the person or people who would be directly affected by the loss of a huge sum of money? Why lie that you had dropped the case? And what kind of stress might it be that having lied about all this, you realised that the case was going to trial, that this would entail huge expense and having to confess that you hadn't dropped the case?]
To return to the matter of the politics of these legal documents:
You might think that the Particulars of Claim would be the surgical, analytical document that would deliver the telling blow. Anything to do with me being a supporter of Corbyn would surely have been junked? Not so. Right up the top of the PoC was a comment about me being an 'active supporter of Jeremy Corbyn'.
Once again, the Claimant's team (Pete Newbon and his solicitor) flagged up the Claimant's political motive. It certainly didn't help or progress the Claim. I'll say it again: the crucial thing to show in a Claim is that the person you're suing (the Defendant) has made a statement of fact that is untrue and that it has harmed the Claimant (ie the person suing).
Later in this Particulars of Claim, there is a possible explanation as to why the Claim included that comment ('active supporter of Jeremy Corbyn'). This is how: the Claim goes in for a curious bit of mind-reading in which it claims that the reason why I had really objected to the 'Bear Hunt tweet' was because of what I thought of Corbyn. Here's what it says: 'The Defendant (me) was angry that a book that he [me] had authored formed part of cartoon that ridiculed Jeremy Corbyn.'
Again, it really isn't necessary for a Claimant to go in for mind-reading and indeed, by doing it here, they revealed their motive for suing the Defendant (me). Apart from anything else, this bit of mind-reading is way off the mark. As I explained above, what I was 'angry' about (and always said in public that I was angry about) was that sitting on the open pages of a book I had co-created, were the words 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion'. I was angry AND disgusted! I'm not even sure it's the business of the Claimant to waste time and space discussing my motive for being 'angry', but if the Claimant does it, it's a good idea to a) get it right and, b) not reveal your real motive for bringing the Claim in the first place!
By the way, and for the record, my view of Corbyn at that particular moment was that if he thought he was unfairly attacked in the Bear Hunt tweet, he could look after himself. My concern - call it egotistical, if you like - was to look after me! So, to repeat: this comment about my motive got me completely wrong and in so doing, said more about the Claimant and his lawyer than it did about me, namely that they were extremely interested in Corbyn and Corbyn's supporters. So much so, they damaged their own case. It gave away a motive that was nothing to do with the precise legal matter in hand: defamation and loss of reputation.
So there we are: we have me as the Corbyn supporter in the letter before claim; we have this stuff about me being an 'active supporter of Jeremy Corbyn'; and, thirdly, a false and political comment about what had made me 'angry'. (Incidentally, in an earlier libel case brought against me in which the client was represented by the same solicitor, I was identified as a 'Corbynista'.) It all reveals a pattern, doesn't it?
I don't think it's terribly controversial (or is it?) for me to have the view that this episode might be an example of the law being used for political purposes. And tragically, this whole matter (and its overlap with the disastrous 'freak' case) was secret and stressful for Mr Newbon. I might also suggest that the politics (and/or his political friends, representatives and advisers) assisted him into making decisions that led him into self-inflicted difficulty. That's my honest opinion, not a statement of fact. Perhaps as you read this, you thought it's no such thing? If so, I'd be interested to know how you came to that different opinion.
[Here's the link again to the side-story of how people have tried to 'reveal the truth' (lols) about the 'true' origins of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' - also in the service of this great cause....(er...what cause?). In short, it's an ignorant and silly smear. Just paste this link into your browser.
https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-true-story-of-making-of-book-of.html ]
