LABOUR Party employees created a secret slush fund to support anti-Corbyn candidates standing in the 2017 general election, according to a damning report published today.

The long-awaited report by Martin Forde QC found that senior party workers syphoned off £135,000 into a slush fund to run an “alternative” election strategy.

Senior party staff are also accused of purging left-wing members so that they could not vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 and 2016 leadership elections and demonstrating a “real antipathy” towards him after he won the leadership.

The report was commissioned two years ago after the leak of a 860-page document showing hundreds of damning WhatsApp messages.

Mr Forde said the messages revealed “deplorably factional, insensitive and at times discriminatory attitudes expressed by many of the party’s most senior staff.”

The report also revealed that a handful of senior employees “created an additional fund for printing costs” and spent around “£135k on campaigns supportive of sitting largely anti-Corbyn MPs and not on campaigns for pro-Corbyn candidates in potentially winnable Tory seats.”

The report said it was “unequivocally wrong for HQ staff to pursue an alternative strategy covertly.

“In our view, HQ staff should not have taken strategic decisions into their own hands and sought to conceal their doing so from LOTO [the leader of the opposition] and the campaign committee.

“We are absolutely clear that this should never have happened and we consider that the anger among the membership regarding this issue is justified.”

Former Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: “I am outraged that Labour staff secretly pushed money to anti-Corbyn MPs and not on campaigns for pro-Corbyn candidates in the 2017 election.

“Unite was the biggest funder of that campaign. It was likely Unite members’ money. There must be action.”

Steve Howell, who was Mr Corbyn’s deputy director of strategy and communications, said that money would have made a real difference.

“Officials told us there was only enough cash for a GOTV [get out the vote] mailer to go to 12 marginals,” Mr Howell said.

“The £135,000 would have allowed us to add 30-40 seats, which would have meant winning some of them, maybe enough to form a government.”

The report also accused Labour of “operating a hierarchy of racism or discrimination,” implying that anti-black racism and Islamophobia were not treated with the seriousness they deserved.

Mr Forde said: “It was, of course, also true that some opponents of Jeremy Corbyn saw the issue of anti-semitism as a means of attacking him.”

The report describes the 2019 Panorama programme on anti-semitism in Labour as “entirely misleading.”

The report accuses party employees of carrying out a “validation” process with the aim of blocking left-wing members from voting in the 2015 and 2016 leadership contests.

“In our view, the intention and effect of both validation exercises was to remove ballots from individuals who would otherwise have voted for Jeremy Corbyn,” the report says.

“It does not seem to us credible to suggest that the exercise (in particular the social media component) was not targeted at applicants and members on the left.”

Responding to the Forde Report, Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the Labour Party, said: “The Forde Report casts an important light on events in the Labour Party in recent years. My election as leader in 2015 was a major shock in British politics. It wasn’t about me, but a popular demand for anti-austerity politics following the 2008 financial crisis and 35 years of market fundamentalism.

“Despite overwhelming support from members and affiliates, powerful groups in the party found that change hard to come to terms with. This led to a conflict in Labour that created a toxic environment, which the Forde Report lays bare. In any party there are groups and factions, but the resistance we were faced with went far beyond that.

“It included the secret diversion of campaign funds by senior HQ staff in the 2017 election, which Forde rightly condemns as “unequivocally wrong”. Whether or not that prevented the election of a Labour government, it was dishonest. In a democratic party those decisions should be taken by the elected leadership. Too often the will of the membership was overridden by people who thought they shouldn’t have had a say in the first place.

“Whatever arguments there are about specific findings, this report should help us see a path forward. The politics of the many, not the few, are more needed in this country than ever. We suffer a cost of living scandal while billionaire wealth soars and climate breakdown accelerates while fossil fuel companies boast record profits. For the Labour Party to be the vehicle for a better and sustainable world, things need to change.

“The appalling behaviour that Forde calls out, including the repulsive racism and sexism shown to Diane Abbott and others, should have no place in a progressive party. Toxic factionalism is far from over - nor are persistent problems of racism and sexism - and action must be taken, as Forde makes clear.

 “Most of all, the Party needs to decide what it is for and who decides that. Are we a democratic socialist party, run by members and affiliated unions, that aims for a fundamental transfer of wealth and power from the few to the many? Or are we something else?”

Labour MP Jon Trickett, who was the party’s national campaign co-ordinator in the run-up to the 2017 election, said that the staff involved were guilty of “a betrayal of millions of Labour voters.”

Momentum co-chairwoman Hilary Schan described the report as “a damning indictment of the Labour right’s attempts to destroy from within the Corbyn leadership,” while they engaged in “racist and misogynistic behaviour towards MPs and members.” 

The Labour Party was approached for comment.