John Mann MP – the Bigot with a Big Mouth for Bassetlaw – a reactionary for all seasons
I am indebted for this profile of John Mann MP, one of the key figures behind the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ smears of the past 3 years, to Koser Saeed. See Spotlight
I have covered John Mann before notably when he lied about and harasseda 90 year old Jewish Dr Glatt and Graham Martin, his adviser.
Mann is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. It is a Committee whose primary concern is to use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a protective shield to Zionism and the actions of the Israeli state. The Committee has played an important part in the lead up to the current anti-Semitism smears.
The APPGAA is stuffed with members of the Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel such as Luciana Berger, Mike Freer, Ruth Smeeth, Wes Streeting, Matthew Offord and Bob Blackman. None of them has any record of criticism of Israel’s nakedly racist treatment of its own Palestinian citizens, to say nothing of the Occupation.
Many like Bob Blackman are racists in their own right. See Tory MP accused of Islamophobia after posting anti-Muslim article on Facebook.
Mann has done very well out of his concern for ‘anti-Semitism’ and is the most travelled of any MP in the Commons.
The Committee, chaired once by right-wing Labour MP Dennis McShane, who was gaoled for his part in the expenses scandal, produced a Report into Anti-Semitism in September 2006.
The most ludicrous of all the observations of this Committee was in paragraph 79 where it stated that:
The Israeli government itself may, at times, have mistakenly perceived criticism of its policies and actions to be motivated by antisemitism, but we received no evidence of the accusation of antisemitism being misused by mainstream British Jewish community organisations and leaders.
Ten years later the President of the Board of Deputies, Jonathan Arkush, attackedCorbyn as an anti-Semite and stated that a Jewish group, Jewdas were ‘the source of virulent anti-Semitism’. One wonders if this qualifies as misuse of the accusation of anti-Semitism.
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| John Mann - Rent-a-mouth MP |
The Report stated that ‘anti-Zionist discourse can be polluted with antisemitic themes’ which can happen, but far more widespread is the incidence of anti-Semites hiding their anti-semitism behind support for Israel and Zionism. E.g. Richard Spencer the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right in the USA, the organiser of the neo-Nazi demonstration in Charlottesville, has declared himself a White Zionist. Spencer was effusive in his support of Israel’s Apartheid Jewish Nation State Law. As Ha’aretz noted:
‘In a series of tweets, Spencer writes of his admiration for the law, which confers the right to national self-determination in Israel to the Jewish people alone, and says Jews are 'showing a path forward for Europeans'
Israel provides a model for White supremacists internationally. The JNSL, which excludes 20% of its population from any claim to the land they live in, is a blueprint for White Supremacists. Yet Mann and his acolytes have never, not once, ever mentioned that the incidence of Palestinian supporters using anti-Semitic rhetoric is far outweighed by ardently Zionist anti-Semites in Christian fundamentalist and White Supremacist groups. People like Steve Bannon who combines anti-Semitism with Zionism e.g. his description of Jewish children, whom he didn’t want his own children to go to school with, as ‘whiny brats.’
There is, of course, no acceptance that criticism of Israel is motivated by its own racism. Only last week Israel's Knesset rejected by 71-38 votes a Bill which would have enshrined equality between Jews and non-Jews in its Constitution.
Mann is an all-purpose bigot. He’s not only a supporter of Zionist racism, he is a prominent Brexit supporter because it will stop immigration into the UK. He is also the author of a virulently racist ‘Bassetlaw anti-social behaviour handbook’ where advice is given to his constituents on how to deal with ‘loitering by youths’, ‘graffiti’, ‘neighbours from hell’, ‘alcohol’ – and ‘travellers’. In other words Travellers, Gypsies and Roma are one more social nuisance to be dealt with by way of an ASBO.’ See John Mann MP’s opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ doesn’t extend to Gypsies and Travellers
John Mann was been one of the main witchunters in the Labour Party. He staged a famous confrontation with Ken Livingstone because the latter accurately described the Nazis as supporting Zionism. He called for my expulsion saying my membership of the Labour Party was ‘wholly inappropriate’ (presumably only racists like himself should be members). He has led the false accusations of anti-Semitism and the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.
Despite his pretensions to be an anti-racist Mann was an outspoken supporter of former New Labour Minister Phil Woollas MP. Woollas was removed as an MP by an Election Court because of outrageous and racist lies he told about his Lib Dem opponent. Rejoice - Phil Woolas - New Labour Racist Ejected from Parliament
When Harriet Harman cast Woolas adrift John Mann told her that 'a period of silence would be very welcome.' A paraphrase of a quote from Attlee. Clearly Mann did not understand the irony of him telling anyone to be quiet.
Tony Greenstein
John Mann profile
• Member of Parliament for Bassetlaw CLP since 2001
• Formerly a councillor in the London Borough of Lambeth.
• Mann’s employs his wife, Joanna White (herself a Labour councillor and deputy leader of Bassetlaw District Council), as a part-time office manager and covers her salary through parliamentary expenses.
• Used to work for the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union as Head of Research and Education
• Used to be the National Training Officer at the TUC National Education Centre in North London
• Mann was the national trade union officer during the 1997 general election
• Mann served on the Treasury Select Committee in 2003–2005 and again 2009–2015
• Mann is a Hard Brexiteer. He focused his referendum campaign on immigration and continues to bring the focus back onto immigration even after the referendum campaign.
• Mann has been interviewed by the police over a complaint about a brochure that he issued on anti-social behaviour, which singled out one ethnic community (travellers).
• Mann has opposed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership from the start.
• Mann was behind a North Nottinghamshire enquiry that called for heroin addicts to be offered the option of treatment or prison. With new reforms and more local GPs trained to help heroin addicts, the number of addicts in treatment in Bassetlaw rose from 2 to 400, and crimes involving shoplifting, burglary, theft and robbery fell by 75%
• Mann was the first Labour MP to call for Gordon Brown to resign after the 2010 general election and had previously attacked him when he was prime minster
• Mann was very vocal during the expenses scandal and highly critical of certain mps
• In 2014, Mann compiled a dossier of historic allegations of child abuse involving 12 former ministers
• Mann has accused Corbyn of being lax when it came to acting over allegations of child abuse in his constituency. However, as far as I’m aware, Mann hasn’t held any other MPs up to the same level of scrutiny that he has reserved for Corbyn on these matters.
• Mann campaigned to leave during the EU referendum, convinced that the Labour membership supported the Leave campaign and not Labour's (or Corbyn’s) official stance of supporting the Remain campaign. In reality 65% of Labour voters backed remain, although Mann’s own constituency voted 68% to Leave.
• Mann chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, who commissioned the "All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism" in 2005. The report was printed in 2006 and recommended, amongst other things, a crackdown on ‘anti-Jewish activity’ on university campuses.
• In May 2009, Mann received the American Jewish Committee's Jan Karski Award in recognition of his commitment to fighting antisemitism.
• Mann is also the chair of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism
• Mann expects Corbyn to give special attention for fighting anti-Semitism above all other forms of racism impacting all other minority groups. In June 2017, he criticised Jeremy Corbyn because he was "not prepared to make a speech exclusively, explicitly, just on antisemitism"
• April 2016, Mann publicly attacked Ken Livingstone (a longstanding critic of Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians and who had previously had run-ins with Board of Deputies of British Jews) for saying that Adolf Hitler "was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews". Livingstone was in fact referencing the writings of Lenni Brenner, an American Trotskyist writer, born to an Orthodox Jewish family but later turned atheist. Brenner was in fact a prominent civil rights activist in the 60’s and an opponent of the Vietnam War. The historical accuracy of this claim continues to be widely debated but Mann took the statement as an opportunity to publicly attack Livingstone and accuse him of being a "Nazi apologist"
• In January this year, Mann wrote an article for the Jewish News (Times of Israel), in which he attacked Jackie Walker and suggest her claims of a Witch Hunt were nothing more than conspiracy theories. He accused Jackie, a Jewish woman, of promoting AntiSemitic tropes and peddling lies. However, Jackie responded by saying that it was obvious that she was targeted for being a Corbyn supporter and that she had been fighting fascists and Anti-Semites on the streets for years and was never once accused of promoting AntiSemitic tropes before Corbyn came along.
• On 17th July 2018, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer being the other 4) who voted with the Tories to REJECT a clause that “would make it a negotiating objective of the UK to establish a free trade area for goods between the UK and the EU and if that cannot be agreed then it should be the objective of the UK to secure an agreement to enable the UK’s participation in a customs union with the EU. With a final vote of 307 : 301, it is widely believed that these 5 rebel Labour MP’s were largely responsible for saving Theresa May’s bacon and staving off a potential snap election and therefore the likely ascension of a Corbyn led government.
• On 20th June 2018, John Mann was one of 4 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey and Graham Stringer being the other 3), who voted with the Tories to “NOT to require the Government's future plans in relation to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union to be put to MPs for approval following the eventualities of: MPs rejecting a withdrawal agreement; no withdrawal agreement being reached by 21 January 2019; or the Prime Minister stating no withdrawal agreement can be reached.”
• On 12th June 2018, John Mann was one of 7 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Ronnie Campbell, Kelvin Hopkins and Dennis Skinner being the other 6), who voted with the Tories to “NOT to ensure Parliamentary approval is required before regulations setting the date of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union are made”
• On 12th June 2018, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer and Ronnie Campbell being the other 4), who voted with the Tories to REJECT allowing a minister to alter the date for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
• On 17th January 2018, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer being the other 4), who voted with the Tories for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union
• On 20th December 2017, John Mann was one of 2 Labour MPs (Caroline Flint being the other), who voted with the Tories to REJECT “holding a referendum to choose between either accepting the terms of an agreement for the United Kingdom's Withdrawal from the European Union or remaining a member of the European Union.”
• On 11th September 2017, John Mann was one of 7 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Ronnie Campbell, Kelvin Hopkins and Dennis Skinner being the other 6), who voted with the Tories to “end the supremacy of European Union law in United Kingdom law and convert EU law into domestic law on the UK's exit from the European Union.”
• On 8th February 2017, John Mann was one of 6 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Kelvin Hopkins and Gisela Stuart being the other 5), who voted with the Tories “against making a report on a referendum for ratifying the United Kingdom's new relationship with the European Union a prerequisite for the Prime Minister giving notification of the United Kingdom's intent to withdraw from the European Union.”
• On 14th Sept 2016, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Dennis Skinner and Gisela Stuart being the other 4), who voted with the Tories in favour of withdrawing UK membership of the EU.
• On 20th July 2016, John Mann was one of 8 Labour MPs (Nick Brown, Ronnie Campbell, John Cryer, Rob Marris, Dennis Skinner, John Spellar and Graham Stringer being the other 7), who voted with the Tories “against proportional representation for electing MPs and against reducing the voting age to 16.”
• On 30th Jan 2014, John Mann was one of 10 Labour MPs (Hazel Blears, Jim Dowd, Natascha Engel, Kate Hoey, Siobhain McDonagh, Graham Stringer, Gisela Stuart, Derek Twigg and Keith Vaz being the other 9), who voted with the Tories to only allow “human rights grounds to be used to prevent a foreign criminal being deported in cases where there would be a breach of the right to life, or right not to be tortured” and also for “adding a new exemption to deportation for cases where harm to the criminal's children outweighs the public interest in removal.”
• On 27th June 2012, John Mann was one of 3 Labour MPs (Alex Cunningham and Alan Whitehead being the other 2), who voted NOT to approve a motion to “strengthen the notification requirements which apply to sex offenders under Part 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, requiring notification to the police of all foreign travel and of information in relation to residence, banking arrangements and passports and other forms of identification. Further requirements include notification of information on residence on a weekly basis where there is no sole or main residence and to notify where the offender stays for at least 12 hours in a household with a child”.
• On 14th March 2006, John Mann was one of 71 Labour MPs who voted with the Tories to reject an amendment that would have made it illegal for the docking of dogs' (the surgical removal of dogs tails) for anything other than the purpose of medical treatment.
• In 2012, John Mann’s wife was sent a dead bird by a disgruntled local (Roger Dyas-Elliott), over what is believed to have been a council matter. However, Mann later reported this as an incident of Anti-Semitism and attributed it to Momentum activists. However, Momentum wasn’t set up until 2015 (3yrs after the incident) and, in fact, it was established by Jewish members of the Labour Party.
• Mann also claimed that he and his son have received Islamist death threats, linked to Anti-Semitism, as well as death threats from pro-hunting campaigners and from the extreme right and even from a drug dealer. However, what’s odd is that he’s only very recently claimed that they were linked to Anti-Semitism on the left.
• In August this year, John Mann called for special privileges for Jewish Labour MPs, calling for them to be “automatically reselected at elections”.
• In June 2017, shortly after the general election, Mann admitted in an article in the Independent that “he was wrong about Jeremy Corbyn's electability” and that he did not expect “the strength of support that was galvanised in many parts of the country”.
• However, in October this year, the BBC reported that Members of Parliament had benefitted from more than £2m worth of free overseas trips over the last two years and that Mann had registered more trips than any other MP, with eight overseas visits on the Register of Interests over the last year. Mann claimed the trips were "part of the job". Most were in fact related to his role as the UK chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism. One assumes therefore that the dawning realisation of Corbyn’s apparent electability had raised a few concern with the Inter-Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism and, perhaps, with interested parties in Israel as well?
• Formerly a councillor in the London Borough of Lambeth.
• Mann’s employs his wife, Joanna White (herself a Labour councillor and deputy leader of Bassetlaw District Council), as a part-time office manager and covers her salary through parliamentary expenses.
• Used to work for the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union as Head of Research and Education
• Used to be the National Training Officer at the TUC National Education Centre in North London
• Mann was the national trade union officer during the 1997 general election
• Mann served on the Treasury Select Committee in 2003–2005 and again 2009–2015
• Mann is a Hard Brexiteer. He focused his referendum campaign on immigration and continues to bring the focus back onto immigration even after the referendum campaign.
• Mann has been interviewed by the police over a complaint about a brochure that he issued on anti-social behaviour, which singled out one ethnic community (travellers).
• Mann has opposed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership from the start.
• Mann was behind a North Nottinghamshire enquiry that called for heroin addicts to be offered the option of treatment or prison. With new reforms and more local GPs trained to help heroin addicts, the number of addicts in treatment in Bassetlaw rose from 2 to 400, and crimes involving shoplifting, burglary, theft and robbery fell by 75%
• Mann was the first Labour MP to call for Gordon Brown to resign after the 2010 general election and had previously attacked him when he was prime minster
• Mann was very vocal during the expenses scandal and highly critical of certain mps
• In 2014, Mann compiled a dossier of historic allegations of child abuse involving 12 former ministers
• Mann has accused Corbyn of being lax when it came to acting over allegations of child abuse in his constituency. However, as far as I’m aware, Mann hasn’t held any other MPs up to the same level of scrutiny that he has reserved for Corbyn on these matters.
• Mann campaigned to leave during the EU referendum, convinced that the Labour membership supported the Leave campaign and not Labour's (or Corbyn’s) official stance of supporting the Remain campaign. In reality 65% of Labour voters backed remain, although Mann’s own constituency voted 68% to Leave.
• Mann chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, who commissioned the "All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism" in 2005. The report was printed in 2006 and recommended, amongst other things, a crackdown on ‘anti-Jewish activity’ on university campuses.
• In May 2009, Mann received the American Jewish Committee's Jan Karski Award in recognition of his commitment to fighting antisemitism.
• Mann is also the chair of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism
• Mann expects Corbyn to give special attention for fighting anti-Semitism above all other forms of racism impacting all other minority groups. In June 2017, he criticised Jeremy Corbyn because he was "not prepared to make a speech exclusively, explicitly, just on antisemitism"
• April 2016, Mann publicly attacked Ken Livingstone (a longstanding critic of Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians and who had previously had run-ins with Board of Deputies of British Jews) for saying that Adolf Hitler "was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews". Livingstone was in fact referencing the writings of Lenni Brenner, an American Trotskyist writer, born to an Orthodox Jewish family but later turned atheist. Brenner was in fact a prominent civil rights activist in the 60’s and an opponent of the Vietnam War. The historical accuracy of this claim continues to be widely debated but Mann took the statement as an opportunity to publicly attack Livingstone and accuse him of being a "Nazi apologist"
• In January this year, Mann wrote an article for the Jewish News (Times of Israel), in which he attacked Jackie Walker and suggest her claims of a Witch Hunt were nothing more than conspiracy theories. He accused Jackie, a Jewish woman, of promoting AntiSemitic tropes and peddling lies. However, Jackie responded by saying that it was obvious that she was targeted for being a Corbyn supporter and that she had been fighting fascists and Anti-Semites on the streets for years and was never once accused of promoting AntiSemitic tropes before Corbyn came along.
• On 17th July 2018, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer being the other 4) who voted with the Tories to REJECT a clause that “would make it a negotiating objective of the UK to establish a free trade area for goods between the UK and the EU and if that cannot be agreed then it should be the objective of the UK to secure an agreement to enable the UK’s participation in a customs union with the EU. With a final vote of 307 : 301, it is widely believed that these 5 rebel Labour MP’s were largely responsible for saving Theresa May’s bacon and staving off a potential snap election and therefore the likely ascension of a Corbyn led government.
• On 20th June 2018, John Mann was one of 4 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey and Graham Stringer being the other 3), who voted with the Tories to “NOT to require the Government's future plans in relation to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union to be put to MPs for approval following the eventualities of: MPs rejecting a withdrawal agreement; no withdrawal agreement being reached by 21 January 2019; or the Prime Minister stating no withdrawal agreement can be reached.”
• On 12th June 2018, John Mann was one of 7 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Ronnie Campbell, Kelvin Hopkins and Dennis Skinner being the other 6), who voted with the Tories to “NOT to ensure Parliamentary approval is required before regulations setting the date of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union are made”
• On 12th June 2018, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer and Ronnie Campbell being the other 4), who voted with the Tories to REJECT allowing a minister to alter the date for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
• On 17th January 2018, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer being the other 4), who voted with the Tories for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union
• On 20th December 2017, John Mann was one of 2 Labour MPs (Caroline Flint being the other), who voted with the Tories to REJECT “holding a referendum to choose between either accepting the terms of an agreement for the United Kingdom's Withdrawal from the European Union or remaining a member of the European Union.”
• On 11th September 2017, John Mann was one of 7 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Ronnie Campbell, Kelvin Hopkins and Dennis Skinner being the other 6), who voted with the Tories to “end the supremacy of European Union law in United Kingdom law and convert EU law into domestic law on the UK's exit from the European Union.”
• On 8th February 2017, John Mann was one of 6 Labour MPs (Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Kelvin Hopkins and Gisela Stuart being the other 5), who voted with the Tories “against making a report on a referendum for ratifying the United Kingdom's new relationship with the European Union a prerequisite for the Prime Minister giving notification of the United Kingdom's intent to withdraw from the European Union.”
• On 14th Sept 2016, John Mann was one of 5 Labour MPs (Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer, Dennis Skinner and Gisela Stuart being the other 4), who voted with the Tories in favour of withdrawing UK membership of the EU.
• On 20th July 2016, John Mann was one of 8 Labour MPs (Nick Brown, Ronnie Campbell, John Cryer, Rob Marris, Dennis Skinner, John Spellar and Graham Stringer being the other 7), who voted with the Tories “against proportional representation for electing MPs and against reducing the voting age to 16.”
• On 30th Jan 2014, John Mann was one of 10 Labour MPs (Hazel Blears, Jim Dowd, Natascha Engel, Kate Hoey, Siobhain McDonagh, Graham Stringer, Gisela Stuart, Derek Twigg and Keith Vaz being the other 9), who voted with the Tories to only allow “human rights grounds to be used to prevent a foreign criminal being deported in cases where there would be a breach of the right to life, or right not to be tortured” and also for “adding a new exemption to deportation for cases where harm to the criminal's children outweighs the public interest in removal.”
• On 27th June 2012, John Mann was one of 3 Labour MPs (Alex Cunningham and Alan Whitehead being the other 2), who voted NOT to approve a motion to “strengthen the notification requirements which apply to sex offenders under Part 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, requiring notification to the police of all foreign travel and of information in relation to residence, banking arrangements and passports and other forms of identification. Further requirements include notification of information on residence on a weekly basis where there is no sole or main residence and to notify where the offender stays for at least 12 hours in a household with a child”.
• On 14th March 2006, John Mann was one of 71 Labour MPs who voted with the Tories to reject an amendment that would have made it illegal for the docking of dogs' (the surgical removal of dogs tails) for anything other than the purpose of medical treatment.
• In 2012, John Mann’s wife was sent a dead bird by a disgruntled local (Roger Dyas-Elliott), over what is believed to have been a council matter. However, Mann later reported this as an incident of Anti-Semitism and attributed it to Momentum activists. However, Momentum wasn’t set up until 2015 (3yrs after the incident) and, in fact, it was established by Jewish members of the Labour Party.
• Mann also claimed that he and his son have received Islamist death threats, linked to Anti-Semitism, as well as death threats from pro-hunting campaigners and from the extreme right and even from a drug dealer. However, what’s odd is that he’s only very recently claimed that they were linked to Anti-Semitism on the left.
• In August this year, John Mann called for special privileges for Jewish Labour MPs, calling for them to be “automatically reselected at elections”.
• In June 2017, shortly after the general election, Mann admitted in an article in the Independent that “he was wrong about Jeremy Corbyn's electability” and that he did not expect “the strength of support that was galvanised in many parts of the country”.
• However, in October this year, the BBC reported that Members of Parliament had benefitted from more than £2m worth of free overseas trips over the last two years and that Mann had registered more trips than any other MP, with eight overseas visits on the Register of Interests over the last year. Mann claimed the trips were "part of the job". Most were in fact related to his role as the UK chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism. One assumes therefore that the dawning realisation of Corbyn’s apparent electability had raised a few concern with the Inter-Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism and, perhaps, with interested parties in Israel as well?
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