MONTHS after the damning Forde report was published, it takes the author having to appear on an Al Jazeera programme for the Labour Party to bother giving even the half-hearted, pathetic response that it has.

The mealy-mouthed words from the leader and general secretary of the party make no firm commitment to deal with the deep-seated anti-black racism and Islamophobia that infect the party when this is exactly what is required.

The fact is Labour is the epitome of institutional racism — but it is still very happy to rely on the black vote to get it elected in countless seats throughout the country.

As Forde showed, anti-black racism and Islamophobia are not treated as seriously as the evil of anti-semitism. For genuine anti-racists, there can never be a hierarchy of oppression.

Shame on Labour for not owning up to this and then showing what they intend to do about it.

Instead, we will continue to see a response based on the all-pervading factionalism of the party.

Even many Jewish activists who are considered not to be in the right-wing faction of Labour have been booted out of the party in record numbers.

Any activist within Labour — as I was for 41 years — can testify to the endemic factionalism throughout its structures.

Don’t get me wrong. I knew about factionalism in Labour when I joined the party in 1981, so this is no revelation to me.

I was recently warned by some people in the leadership of an organisation I no longer have any involvement with that by calling out the racism in Labour I was damaging their prospects of improving their relationship with the party.

Nobody who has known me for more than a nano-second can believe that I would ever modify my criticism of an individual or organisation because it might upset someone or there might be some additional benefit to take into account.

We all must call out Labour for its abject failure to deal with racist attitudes and behaviour at all levels of their operation.

What I have never seen before — until the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader — was the weaponisation of anti-semitism against so many people who had a long record of tireless campaigning years against all forms of discrimination.

It happened to me too.

To make matters worse, the accusations were often coming from people who were hardly known for raising their voices any way against racism, Islamophobia or anti-semitism.

A few years after joining Labour, I became active in the movement to have Black Sections recognised within the party and eventually went on to be one of its chairs.

I remember that the first constituency to support Black Sections was Islington North — and the first MP was Corbyn.

Our movement was often subjected to abuse from people within the party who accused us of wanting to divide the party by the mere fact that we believed the creation of these sections was a good way to raise the anti-racism banner that, to be frank, had long been ignored by the party.

I recall several leading lights who were white — often happy to sit on “the black vote” — insulting us by saying we were trying to create “apartheid” within the Labour Party. I have rarely felt angrier in politics.

When the Black Sections produced the Black Agenda, a serious document setting out practical ways of dealing with issues that had long affected the black community, we were ignored by the right-wing leadership of the party largely because we were identified as being on the left.

I have never taken any of this personally. Even when someone decided to trawl back 10 years through my social media to come up with spurious allegations of anti-semitism against me in an attempt to have me disciplined by the party.

The accusation of anti-semitism against me coincidentally landed on the day ballot papers for the general secretary election in which I was a candidate were hitting doormats.

As hurtful and disgusting as it was, I knew this was the way things worked within Labour and some trade unionists continue to help hold this behaviour together.

The fact that I was already pretty much expecting something like that to happen because of the factionalism within the party — never mind the union — makes the whole thing worse.

I have written in these pages before that I think there are people on the left and right of Labour who need to take a cold, hard look at themselves and their attitudes on race. I repeat that here.

The problem is that there is no real indication that anyone in the senior levels of Labour and some trade unions has any intention of addressing anti-black racism or Islamophobia beyond tokenistic occasional half-hearted statements or jamborees such as Black History Month or a “year of black members.”

It is just not important to them. If it was, they would have prioritised tackling racism long ago.

But to use anti-semitism or anti-black racism to further the needs of your faction — whether right or left — is beyond intolerable, and takes things to a whole new level of racism.

The fact that senior officials within Labour felt comfortable in making blatantly racist and sexist comments, which were, as far as I can see, known to the general secretary, the administrative leader of the organisation, is astonishing — and demonstrates how far things have sunk.

The culture — led by the factionalism of the organisation — must have been such that they knew there would be no comeback for these comments.

The fact that these people appear to still be in and around the labour movement is insulting and frankly unforgivable.

Imagine if any of Corbyn’s staff had been found to have said these things. The right wing of Labour would have gone into a hysterical frenzy, baying for blood. They probably would have got it too.

Some might say why should I even still care about this: I left Labour last year and joined the Communist Party.

To ask that reveals an ignorance of the importance of solidarity on which the anti-racist and, allegedly, the labour movement depends.

Whether in Labour or not, we should all be concerned if we see racism or discrimination of any kind flourishing. And we should fully commit to doing something about it.

Those who refuse to take anti-black racism or Islamophobia seriously have no place in the labour or trade union movement and should be called out and removed.

Follow Roger on Twitter @RogerAMck.