UK Labour’s major donor is Israel lobbyist who profited from South African apartheid

The UK Labour Party’s latest corporate mega-donor is a pro-Israel businessman whose company profited from South African apartheid, the Electronic Intifada has reported in a sensational article exposing the morally questionable past of the party’s bankrollers under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.

A report in the Financial Times revealed that the Labour Party landed Gary Lubner as its new megadonor. The multimillionaire donated £5 million ($6.29m) to become the party’s biggest donor and one of the biggest political donors in Britain. Under Starmer, Labour has been plunged into a financial crisis largely as a result of its purge of left-wing members. It has reportedly lost around 200,000 members since Jeremy Corbyn was leader, costing the party more than $10.5m in lost membership fees.

It is claimed that Starmer is now filling the gap with the support of wealthy business donors like Lubner. A profile of Labour’s mega donor uncovered Lubner’s alleged connections with South Africa’s brutal white supremacist regime in 1977.

His company reportedly played an important role busting international sanctions against the South African apartheid regime in the 1980s. Lubner was an accountant for the firm throughout its sanctions-busting period in the 1980s and his father and uncle — who were also his bosses — personally donated to the ruling National Party, which was the architect of apartheid in South Africa, the Electronic Intifada reported. A spokesperson for Lubner denied the allegations.

Read The promotion of an anti-Muslim figure by a Labour MP exposes the ‘hierarchy of racism’ in the party

Successive annual reports were cited, apparently showing that Lubner is a long-standing donor to the United Jewish Israel Appeal, a lobby group with close ties to the state of Israel, and that other Lubner family members are long-standing donors to the apartheid state of Israel.

Evidence of Lubner’s connection with apartheid in South Africa includes a 2017 investigation by South African journalists who published their findings, based on archival documents, showing that the Lubners donated to the ruling National Party during the apartheid era.

An image of a letter sent to Prime Minister P W Botha by Lubner’s uncle in 1982 exposing the family’s strong connection with the apartheid regime was also included. In the letter, Bertie Lubner fawned over the apartheid leader, writing that, “It is men with such high ideals and determination like yourself that create history.” Botha is accused of being a leading white supremacist and was a former member of the Ossewabrandwag, a South African Nazi group.

After the Lubners were exposed, the family’s sympathisers defended them. Former president F W de Klerk – also from the National Party – made excuses for the family’s support of the apartheid regime saying that, “They did not support apartheid, they supported the abolition of apartheid.” Gary Lubner himself is now said to claim that he worked against apartheid “from inside” the regime.

The Lubner family’s Israel connection is deep. Bertie Lubner is said to have been a major financial backer of Ben Gurion University of the Negev from 1975. A South African fact-finding mission in 2011 found the university guilty of “institutional complicity and active collaboration with the Israeli military, occupation and apartheid practices.” Moreover, Gary Lubner’s son Jack is a leading member of several pro-Israel lobby groups in Britain, including Zionist groups such as the Jewish Labour Movement, Yachad and the Israel Embassy-funded Union of Jewish Students.

READ: UK Labour owes an apology to pro-Palestinian British Jews ‘purged’ from the party