09.01.2020

Case update

Stan Keable was sacked for political activity, and won a verdict of unfair dismissal: but the decision is being challenged

Dear friends, comrades and defenders of the right of employees to freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate.

Thank you all for your previous contributions, which have raised a total of £3,196. However, as my “unfair dismissal” decision will be challenged at the Employment Appeals Tribunal in the coming months, my legal costs are likely to rise to more than £20,000. So I am again asking you to dig deep and donate to my GoFundMe.

My suspension from work by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham - a Labour council - on February 27 2018 was grist to the mill of the anti-Semitism smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. I had made comments critical of Zionism the previous day in a conversation in Parliament Square during the Zionist-led ‘Enough is Enough’ demonstration and the Jewish Voice for Labour counterdemonstration. Although the Evening Standard and Mail Online reported my words accurately and did not accuse me of anti-Semitism, their reports were surrounded by multiple unsubstantiated allegations of Labour anti-Semitism. My vindication, by contrast - which might have been treated as exposing such allegations as fake news - was unsurprisingly ignored by the mainstream media. The dirty work of demonising antiracist socialists as racist, and Labour as a den of Jew-haters, has sadly been effective - for the time being.

Since the April 2019 unfair dismissal decision by the employment tribunal (www.gov.uk/employmenttribunal- decisions/mr-s-e-keable-vlondon- borough-of-hammersmithand- fulham-2205904-2018) the council has resisted reinstatement, maintaining that my post will disappear in an “imminent” reorganisation of its private-sector housing service. But the December 12 remedy hearing clearly established that no reorganisation has yet taken place, and that my post remains vacant - so a reinstatement order seems likely, when the remedy judgment is given, some time in January.

Just before Xmas, however, the Employment Appeals Tribunal finally granted permission to the council to appeal against the unfair dismissal judgement. The appeal process is expected to consist of a battle between barristers on points of law, and so will involve me (and the council) in substantial legal costs. Fingers crossed …