Two rallies outside Parliament took place on 26 March 2018. Stan Keable attended the rally organised by Jewish Voices for Labour, held at the same time as another rally, organised under the slogan ‘Enough is Enough’. Tribune readers are familiar with the different viewpoints at those rallies.

What subsequently happened shows the distortions and lack of nuance surrounding Labour’s antisemitism crisis.

Keable attended the JVL rally outside work hours, in his own time and personal capacity. There was nothing that would link him to his employment with Hammersmith and Fulham Council. He had a conversation with an individual attending the Enough is Enough rally.

That conversation, or part of it, was filmed, not by Keable but by a journalist who did not ask for his consent (Keable says that he had been aware of a camera at some point during the conversation). Later the footage was posted on Twitter by a Newsnight journalist and captioned ‘antisemitism didn’t cause the Holocaust and Zionists collaborated with the Nazis’.

The caption wholly misrepresented what Keable was recorded as saying. He said ‘No, no, I am not saying that. I am saying that the Nazis were antisemitic. The problem I have got is that the Zionist movement at that time collaborated with them.’ This was in response to the other participant saying ‘it was antisemitism that caused the Holocaust. Are you really, are you suggesting that it was not antisemitism?’

This caption was the first distortion.

Keable was not named in the tweet. Greg Hands, Conservative MP for Chelsea and Fulham re-tweeted it, identifying Keable as ‘the local Momentum organiser in Hammersmith and Fulham’.

Keable had worked for the Council for 17 years. He had a clean disciplinary record and was good at his job. He was not in a politically restricted post. He is a reasonably well-known activist on the left.

Greg Hands’ tweet came to the attention of the Leader of the Council who obviously realised that Keable worked for the Council.

The following day, 27 March, the Council suspended Keable from his employment, held an investigation, and then conducted a disciplinary hearing. In the investigation and the hearing, Keable was told that his misconduct was that his views were in breach of the Council’s policy and potentially of the Equality Act 2010.

However, when Keable was dismissed, the reasons given were different to those put to him. They were: that a reasonable person, viewing the conversation, would interpret his comments as suggesting that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust.

This was the second distortion, distorting Keable’s controversial point that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis, and linking collaboration directly to the Holocaust.

Keable brought a claim of unfair dismissal to the Employment Tribunal. The Tribunal did not rule on whether Keable was right in his comments. Keable won on the simple point that the reason for his dismissal had not been put to him. If it had been, he would have answered that Greg Hands MP, the Mail and the Evening Standard (who had both commented on the tweet) had not interpreted what he said as meaning collaboration with the Holocaust.

The Tribunal also found that the Council had not considered whether a lesser sanction, such as a warning, would have been appropriate, given that Keable was entitled to attend the rally in his own time, that he had not published the comments, and that they were not discriminatory, antisemitic, racist, unlawful, criminal, libellous, or threatening.

The Tribunal ordered that Keable should be reinstated in his job.

The Council appealed against the Tribunal’s decision to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). On 26 October, the Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed the appeal. So the Tribunal’s decision stands: Keable’s dismissal was unfair and he should be reinstated.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the EAT’s decision is this:

‘The purpose of a fair procedure is not a “tick box” exercise. Within an employment disciplinary procedure, a fair procedure should seek to ensure that an individual, whose future employment may be at risk, has the opportunity to convey relevant information to the decision maker prior to a decision being taken. It may also provide a forum within an individual may reflect upon what has gone before and, possibly, adopt a different position, reflect, apologise or agree to modify future behaviour… A fair and open procedure, where there is co-operation, genuine and effective communication regarding a disciplinary charge, is far more likely to engender reflection, perhaps regret or expressions of remorse which may in turn lead to better performance in the future, than a hostile, unduly adversarial or closed procedure, particularly where one party does not know or understand properly the position of the other.’

The EAT is reminding employers that employment law requires them to act fairly, to put all the allegations of misconduct to the employee so that he or she can answer, and to consider the wide range of sanctions available. Importantly, disciplinary processes might be more than just punishment; they might also be about changing behaviour.

This last point chimes with the position that Keable’s barrister, David Renton, has taken in his book ‘Labour’s Anti-Semitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong and How to Learn from It’. Reflecting on Labour’s disciplinary procedures, he says, ‘The point of the disciplinary process is not to punish people, or to prove the moral standing of a Party in throwing out those it rejects, but to dissuade certain kinds of behaviour by causing those who might go on to do something objectionable to think before they act.’

For those of us who have watched Labour’s disciplinary procedures in recent years, its process does seem intended to punish people, rather than provide a chance to reflect (where the alleged offence is suitable for reflection and apology). A kinder disciplinary process is necessary for the Labour Party.