An Ex-Labour home secretary yesterday launched a devastating attack on Jeremy Corbyn and his top shadow cabinet lieutenants, accusing them of giving “tacit support” to Al Qaeda.
Charles Clarke said the failure of the Labour leader and his key frontbench supporters to back officially listing Al Qaeda as a terror group just six months before 9/11 had given effective backing to the extremists.
Another former Labour home secretary Jack Straw said proscribing Al Qaeda had been critical to stopping Osama bin Laden killing more innocent people.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow development secretary Diane Abbott were also among those who failed to back proscribing Al Qaeda, despite the group having already slaughtered scores of people in other attacks.
Clarke told the Standard: “It must have given comfort to the proscribed organisations that people like Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell were giving them tacit support.”
He went on: “Proscription was and is a very important weapon against those organisations which are trying to attack us and our society.
“We never took any decision to proscribe lightly, but only on the basis of a very considered assessment.”
Straw added: “The power to proscribe terrorist organisations was and is extremely important.
“Without it terrorist organisations could get funds and canvass support with impunity.”
It was six months before Al Qaeda flew jets into New York’s World Trade Centre buildings, killing almost 3,000 people, that Straw and Clarke asked parliament to proscribe it along with 20 other groups.
It meant it would become a criminal offence carrying a possible ten year prison sentence to be a member of Al Qaeda or raise money, promote or arrange its meetings.
Of the 413 MPs who voted on the statutory instrument listing Al Qaeda, just 17 opposed the move.
They included Islington North MP Corbyn and his two main future shadow cabinet backers, the Hayes and Harlington MP McDonnell and Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Abbott.
The leader would not comment today but at the time Corbyn said in a Commons debate that proscription of Al Qaeda and other groups was “causing a great deal of disquiet in the Islamic, Turkish and Tamil communities.”
He said some of the 21 organisations were engaged in ceasefires in their own countries and “the search for long-lasting peace”.
A spokesperson for McDonnell said today that he voted against the measure because it meant another group, the Sikh Youth Federation, was proscribed.
He added: “John had many members of the Sikh community in his constituency who were members of the group and were rightly shocked to be on such a list.
“There was no way the list could be amended. It was a take it or leave it vote.
“And if anything John has subsequently been proved to be right in the end by the fact that this government’s recent review has lifted this unjust ban on the [Sikh] group.”
In 2001, Labour minister Lord Bassam said the Sikh group was involved in “assassinations, bombings and kidnappings”. When his Tory successor Lord Bates lifted the ban on the group this year, he said it was clear it was “concerned in terrorism” at the time of proscription.
The Standard contacted Abbott about the vote but she had made no response to the story this morning.
In a 2001 debate before she said: “While no one denies the atrocities perpetrated by some groups on the list, what we are attempting to scrutinise tonight is the process, the thinking and the procedure behind this type of proscription.
“The history of Britain’s withdrawal from empire is littered with groups that were described as terrorists, but survived to take tea with the Queen.”
As well as Al Qaeda, the 2001 vote also proscribed Hezbollah and Hamas, whose members Corbyn has since referred to as “friends”.
The Labour leader also caused controversy when he described the death of Bin Laden as “yet another tragedy”.
The three Labour figures voted against the proscription of Al Qaeda despite it having already been responsible for killing two people in a 1992 Yemeni hotel bombing, six in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing and more than 200 people in US embassy bombings in 1998.
A year before the Commons vote on proscription, Al Qaeda also killed 17 US sailors when it bombed the USS Cole as it was docked in Yemen.  
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said it showed that “Labour are a serious risk to our national security”.
In a 2001 debate before the vote Abbot said: “While no one denies the atrocities perpetrated by some groups on the list, what we are attempting to scrutinise tonight is the process, the thinking and the procedure behind this type of proscription.
“The history of Britain’s withdrawal from empire is littered with groups that were described as terrorists, but survived to take tea with the Queen.”