Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (/ˈkɔːrbɪn/; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist.[1][2] He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North since 1983.[3] As of October 2020, Corbyn sits in the House of Commons as an independent, following the suspension of the whip.
"Corbyn" redirects here. For other people with the name, see Corbyn (name).
Jeremy Corbyn
- Tom Watson
- Ian Lavery
26,188 (48.7%)
Andrew Murray
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Claudia Bracchitta(m. 1987; div. 1999)
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Laura Álvarez(m. 2012)
3 sons
Piers Corbyn (brother)
Finsbury Park, London
North London Polytechnic (did not graduate)
Born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, and raised in Wiltshire and Shropshire, Corbyn joined the Labour Party as a teenager. Moving to London, he became a trade union representative. In 1974, he was elected to Haringey Council and became Secretary of Hornsey Constituency Labour Party until being elected as the MP for Islington North in 1983; he has been reelected to the office nine times. His activism has included roles in Anti-Fascist Action, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and advocating for a united Ireland and Palestinian statehood. As a backbench MP, Corbyn routinely voted against the Labour whip, including New Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. A vocal opponent of the Iraq War, he chaired the Stop the War Coalition from 2011 to 2015, a period when he received the Gandhi International Peace Award; he also won the Seán MacBride Peace Prize in 2017. Analyses of domestic media coverage of Corbyn have found it to be critical or antagonistic.[4][5]
Corbyn was elected Leader of the Labour Party in 2015. The party's membership increased sharply, both during the leadership campaign and following his election.[6] Taking the party to the left, he advocated renationalising public utilities and railways, a less interventionist military policy, and reversals of austerity cuts to welfare and public services. Although critical of the European Union, he supported continued membership in the 2016 referendum. After Labour MPs sought to remove him in 2016 through a formal leadership challenge, he won a second leadership contest. In the 2017 general election, Labour increased its share of the vote to 40%, with its 9.6% vote rise their largest improvement since the 1945 general election. This resulted in a net gain of 30 seats and a hung parliament; but the Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May, formed a minority government and Labour remained in Opposition. In 2019, after deadlock in Parliament over Brexit, Corbyn endorsed holding a referendum on the withdrawal agreement, with a personal stance of neutrality. In the 2019 general election, Labour's vote share fell to 32%, leading to a net loss of 60 seats and leaving it with 202, its fewest since 1935. Corbyn said he would not lead Labour into the next election, triggering a leadership election in 2020 that was won by Keir Starmer, his Shadow Brexit Secretary.
During his tenure as leader, Corbyn came under criticism in relation to antisemitism within the Labour Party. Corbyn has condemned antisemitism[7] and apologised for its presence within the party,[8] while his leadership oversaw changes to strengthen party disciplinary procedures regarding hate speech and racism as recommended by the 2016 Chakrabarti Inquiry.[9] An internal 2020 report and the subsequent 2022 Forde Report noted that Corbyn's team inherited a dysfunctional disciplinary system which eventually improved under General Secretary Jennie Formby, and stated that antisemitism was used as a factional weapon by both opponents and supporters of Corbyn within the party. A 2020 Equality and Human Rights Commission inquiry into the matter found the party under his leadership was responsible for unlawful acts of discrimination and harassment.[10][11] After asserting that the scale of antisemitism within the party had been overstated for political reasons, Corbyn was suspended from Labour Party membership in October 2020. The membership suspension was lifted a month later after a formal disciplinary warning, but the Labour leadership declined to restore the whip, denying readmission to the parliamentary party.
In 2022, Al Jazeera's analysis of leaked documents[12] from the Labour Party alleges that senior Labour officials attempted to undermine support for Corbyn and, on some occasions, to silence debate about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.[13] In March 2023, Labour's national executive committee resolved not to endorse Corbyn standing as a candidate in the next general election.[14]
Early career and political activities
Returning to the UK in 1971, Corbyn worked as an official for the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers.[42] He began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum.[43] He worked as a trade union organiser for the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) and Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union,[28][44] where his union was approached by Tony Benn and "encouraged ... to produce a blueprint for workers' control of British Leyland"; the plans did not proceed after Benn was moved to a different Department.[45]
He was appointed a member of a district health authority and in early 1974, at the age of 24, he was elected to Haringey Council from South Hornsey ward.[46] After boundary changes in 1978 he was re-elected in Harringay ward as councillor, remaining so until 1983.[22][47] As a delegate from Hornsey to the Labour Party Conference in 1978, Corbyn successfully moved a motion calling for dentists to be employed by the NHS rather than as private contractors.[48] He also spoke in another debate, describing a motion calling for greater support for law and order as "more appropriate to the National Front than to the Labour Party".[49]
Corbyn became the local Labour Party's agent and organiser,[50] and had responsibility for the 1979 general election campaign in Hornsey.[28]
Around this time, he became involved with the London Labour Briefing, where he was a contributor. Described by The Times in 1981 as "Briefing's founder",[51] The Economist in a 1982 article named Corbyn as "Briefing's general secretary figure",[52] as did a profile on Corbyn compiled by parliamentary biographer Andrew Roth in 2004,[53][54] which states that he joined the editorial board as General Secretary in 1979.[28] Michael Crick in his 2016 edition of Militant says Corbyn was "a member of the editorial board",[55] as does Lansley, Goss and Wolmar's 1989 work, The Rise and Fall of the Municipal Left.[56] Corbyn said these reports were inaccurate in 2017, telling Sophy Ridge: "I read the magazine. I wrote for the magazine. I was not a member of the editorial board. I didn't agree with it."[53][54]
He worked on Tony Benn's unsuccessful deputy leadership campaign in 1981. Corbyn was keen to allow former International Marxist Group member Tariq Ali to join the party, despite Labour's National Executive having declared him unacceptable, and declared that "so far as we are concerned ... he's a member of the party and he'll be issued with a card."[57] In May 1982, when Corbyn was chairman of the Constituency Labour Party, Ali was given a party card signed by Corbyn;[58] in November the local party voted by 17 to 14 to insist on Ali's membership "up to and including the point of disbandment of the party".[59]
In the July 1982 edition of Briefing, Corbyn opposed expulsions of the Trotskyist and entryist group Militant, saying that "If expulsions are in order for Militant, they should apply to us too." In the same year, he was the "provisional convener" of "Defeat the Witch-Hunt Campaign", based at Corbyn's then address.[60] The Metropolitan Police's Special Branch monitored Corbyn for two decades, until the early 2000s, as he was "deemed to be a subversive". According to the Labour Party, "The Security Services kept files on many peace and Labour movement campaigners at the time, including anti-Apartheid activists and trade unionists".[61]
Parliamentary backbencher (1983–2015)
Labour in opposition (1982–1997)
Corbyn was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the constituency of Islington North, in February 1982,[32][62] winning the final ballot for selection by 39 votes against 35 for GLC councillor Paul Boateng, who in 1987 became one of the first three Black British Members of Parliament (MP).[28] At the 1983 general election he was elected MP for the constituency,[32] defeating the Independent Labour incumbent Michael O'Halloran, and immediately joined the socialist Campaign Group, later becoming secretary of the group.[63][64]
Shortly after being elected to Parliament, he began writing a weekly column for the left-wing Morning Star newspaper.[65] In May 2015, he said that "the Star is the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media".[66] In February 2017, the Morning Star said of Corbyn: "He has been bullied, betrayed and ridiculed, and yet he carries on with the same grace and care he always shows to others – however objectionable their behaviour and treatment of him might be."[67]
In 1983, Corbyn spoke on a "no socialism without gay liberation" platform and continued to campaign for LGBT rights.[68]
He was a campaigner against apartheid in South Africa, serving on the National Executive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement,[69] and was arrested in 1984 while demonstrating outside South Africa House, leading, decades later, to a viral image of Corbyn being arrested circulated by supporters on social media.[70][71] This was as a member of the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group (CLAAG) who carried out a "non-stop picket" for 1,408 days to campaign for Nelson Mandela's release from prison. The Anti-Apartheid Movement did not support this protest, as they had agreed not to demonstrate within 30 feet of the embassy, and the picket failed to gain support from the London ANC; Mandela's failure to respond to CLAAG following his release from prison in 1990 is frequently described as a 'snub'.[72][73]
He supported the 1984–85 miners' strike.[74] In 1985, he invited striking miners into the gallery of the House of Commons; they were expelled for shouting: "Coal not dole".[68] At the end of the strike Corbyn was given a medallion by the miners in recognition of his help.[74]
In 1985, he was appointed national secretary of the newly launched Anti-Fascist Action.[75]
During the BBC's Newsnight in 1984, Conservative MP Terry Dicks said that so-called Labour "scruffs" (such as Corbyn, who at this time was known for wearing an old polo-necked sweater to the Commons[76]) should be banned from addressing the House of Commons unless they maintained higher standards. Corbyn responded, saying that: "It's not a fashion parade, it's not a gentleman's club, it's not a bankers' institute, it's a place where the people are represented."[77]
In 1990, Corbyn opposed the poll tax (formally known as the Community Charge)[78] and nearly went to jail for not paying the tax.[70] He appeared in court the following year as a result.[79]
Corbyn supported the campaign to overturn the convictions of Jawad Botmeh and Samar Alami for the 1994 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in London which argued that there was insufficient evidence to tie them to the act, along with Amnesty International, Unison and a number of journalists and other MPs. Botmeh and Alami had admitted possessing explosives and guns but denied they were for use in Britain. The convictions were upheld by the High Court of Justice in 2001 and by the European Court of Human Rights in 2007.[80]
Corbyn sat on the Social Security Select Committee from 1992 to 1997.[81]
Media coverage
Analyses of domestic media coverage of Corbyn have found it to be critical or antagonistic.[4][5] In July 2016, academics from the London School of Economics published a study of 812 articles about Corbyn taken from eight national newspapers around the time of his Labour leadership election. The study found that 75 percent of the articles either distorted or failed to represent his actual views on subjects. The study's director commented that "Our analysis shows that Corbyn was thoroughly delegitimised as a political actor from the moment he became a prominent candidate and even more so after he was elected as party leader".[155][156]
Another report by the Media Reform Coalition and Birkbeck College in July 2016, based on 10 days of coverage around the time of multiple shadow cabinet resignations, found "marked and persistent imbalance" in favour of sources critical to him; the International Business Times was the only outlet that gave him more favourable than critical coverage.[571]
In August 2016, a YouGov survey found that 97% of Corbyn supporters agreed that the "mainstream media as a whole has been deliberately biasing coverage to portray Jeremy Corbyn in a negative manner", as did 51% of the general "Labour selectorate" sample.[572][573]
In May 2017, Loughborough University's Centre for Research in Communication and Culture concluded that the media was attacking Jeremy Corbyn far more than Theresa May during nine election campaign weekdays examined.[574] The Daily Mail and Daily Express praised Theresa May for election pledges that were condemned when proposed by Labour in previous elections.[575]
In February 2018, Momentum reported that attacks on Corbyn in the press were associated with increases in their membership applications.[576] In September 2019, Labour leaders argued that traditional mainstream media outlets showed bias.[577]
In December 2019, a study by Loughborough University found that British press coverage was twice as hostile to Labour and half as critical of the Conservatives during the 2019 general election campaign as it had been during the 2017 campaign.[578]
In an interview with Middle East Eye in June 2020, Corbyn described the media's treatment of himself while he was Labour leader as obsessive and "at one level laughable, but all designed to be undermining".[579] He said that the media coverage had diverted his media team from helping him pursue "a political agenda on homelessness, on poverty in Britain, on housing, on international issues" to "rebutting these crazy stories, abusive stories, about me the whole time".[579] He said he considered suing as a result of media treatment but was guided by advice from Tony Benn, who told him, "Libel is a rich man's game, and you're not a rich man [...] Go to a libel case – even if you win the case, you'll be destroyed financially in doing so".[579]
Awards and recognition
In 2013, Corbyn was awarded the Gandhi International Peace Award for his "consistent efforts over a 30-year parliamentary career to uphold the Gandhian values of social justice and non‐violence".[613][614] In the same year, he was honoured by the Grassroot Diplomat Initiative for his "ongoing support for a number of non-government organisations and civil causes".[615] Corbyn has won the Parliamentary "Beard of the Year Award" a record six times, as well as being named as the Beard Liberation Front's Beard of the Year, having previously described his beard as "a form of dissent" against New Labour.[616][617]
In 2016, Corbyn was the subject of a musical entitled Corbyn the Musical: The Motorcycle Diaries, written by journalists Rupert Myers and Bobby Friedman.[618]
In 2017 the American magazine Foreign Policy named Corbyn in its Top 100 Global Thinkers list for that year "for inspiring a new generation to re-engage in politics".[619] In December 2017 he was one of three recipients awarded the Seán MacBride Peace Prize "for his sustained and powerful political work for disarmament and peace".[620] The award was announced the previous September.[621]
