A suspended Labour member who once served as an MP and minister has embroiled himself in a child sexual abuse scandal. In a video posted online, you can witness a group of “citizen paedophile hunters” with an apprehended Ivor Caplin, who was allegedly there to meet what he believed to be a 15-year-old boy for sex:
Ivor Caplin, the former chair of the Israel lobby group the JLM, which is closely linked to the Israeli embassy, has been caught by paedophile hunters attempting to meet a child.
He was chair of the organisation during the campaign to oust Corbyn.pic.twitter.com/d1CYMIN6Iv
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) January 11, 2025
Labour suspended Caplin under Keir Starmer in June 2024 following “serious allegations”. The Labour Party never disclosed the nature of these allegations, which is why many are now asking Starmer what his party knew and why they never disclosed it.
The sting against Ivor Caplin
In the video, two men have Ivor Caplin held by the arms. A third man accuses Caplin of having ventured outside with the intention of meeting a 15-year-old child. It’s unclear in the video if this 15-year old exists, or if the men posed as a child online to entrap Caplin. Caplin initially denies this before claiming he did not know the child’s age. In response, the man questioning Caplin says:
The child regularly told you that they were at school, and they were doing school-related activities.
Caplin responds:
Yeah, but that’s not the same as knowing age.
He then says:
I have no doubt… I want to ask him what his age is, and I haven’t – I’ve never done that.
The men dispute this and claim Caplin did in fact ask the child his age. They then claim Caplin wanted the child to bring other children with them – something Caplin denies. Later in the video, Caplin says he didn’t plan to have sex with the child. Once again, the men dispute what Caplin is saying, claiming Caplin directly stated his intention to have sex, stating:
Black and white; it’s your words.
Following the events of the video, Sussex Police arrested Caplin. A spokesperson from the force said:
We are aware of footage circulating on social media showing a man in Brighton being detained on suspicion of engaging in sexual communication with a child. Officers can confirm a local 66-year-old man was arrested on Saturday January 11 and currently remains in custody.
This is an ongoing and active investigation.
“Serious allegations”
Ivor Caplin has had a long relationship with the Labour Party, as reported by Brighton and Hove News:
Mr Caplin was elected to Hove Borough Council in 1991, and become leader until 1997, when it merged with Brighton. He was elected to the new Brighton and Hove Council in 1996 and was deputy leader until resigning from the council in March 1998, less than a year after being elected to parliament as MP for Hove.
He went from being a whip to defence minister in June 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, until he quit in 2005, when he also unexpectedly stood down as MP.
He then became a lobbyist but remained a prominent figure in Labour politics.
In the same piece, Brighton and Hove News commented on Caplin’s 2024 suspension:
A former Hove MP has been suspended by the Labour Party after serious allegations were made about him.
Ivor Caplin, who was a defence minister under Tony Blair, has removed all mention of Labour from his Twitter profile this week.
The outlet adds:
In recent weeks, Mr Caplin has been tweeting increasingly explicit images of young men, ranging from semi-naked stills to pornographic videos.
Brighton and Hove News understands the suspension relates to separate allegations. Mr Caplin declined to comment.
Caplin’s habit of posting pornographic pictures has continued to this day. While it’s acceptable for X users to post pornography, and adults on the site should be able to post whatever they like as long as it’s legal, it is highly unusual for a political figure to post such images to their main account.
Scrolling through Caplin’s profile, you will find yourself alternatively viewing political tweets and hardcore penetrative pornography. It’s unclear why Caplin chose to combine these two interest when there was always the option for him to have a second account.
Given the new allegations, you could theorise that Caplin wanted to engage with young men in such a way that they knew who he was and understood the power he once held. If he’s proven to be a child groomer, this would be predictable behaviour for a celebrity abuser.
Enter GB News
Another reason why Ivor Caplin’s posting habits are bizarre is that the man hasn’t stepped away from the public eye. Recently, Caplin has been making media appearances on GB News in which he spoke favourably of Starmer’s party:
While he did not do so as a representative of the party, there’s no sign that Labour stepped in to ask him to stop. Perhaps they contacted him behind the scenes and he didn’t listen; perhaps they didn’t care and simply left him to it.
Given the “serious” nature of the allegations, you really would expect Labour to have made clear that this suspended member does not speak on their behalf, making this another question for Starmer and the operation around him.
The far-right vs Starmer’s Labour
The far-right is paying particular attention to the Ivor Caplin story:
BREAKING: EX Gov minister who just last week attacked Elon Musk over Rape gane row.. ARRESTED IN PEADO STING!
Former Labour MP Ivor Caplin STUNG trying to meet a TEENAGE BOY to RAPE The 66-year-old was ARRESTED after trying to meet a 15-year-old in Brighton'
Caplin is a… pic.twitter.com/vq5EEIkle7— Knights Templar International (@KnightsTempOrg) January 11, 2025
While we agree wholeheartedly that anyone abusing children should suffer the fullest consequences, we do have some doubts as to the sincerity of these people’s intentions.
Led by figures such as Elon Musk, Nigel Farage, and Tommy Robinson, the far-right has been accusing Labour of covering up for Asian grooming gangs. They’ve also been calling for a new inquiry into the scandal, with Labour voting against the matter on 8 January.
The timeline
The timeline on the grooming gangs scandal is long, with Sky News having helpfully summed it up in this article. Some key take aways from the piece are:
- The names of taxi drivers abusing girls from care homes were first passed to police in 2001. The “first convictions were not until 2010, with the latest in 2024 – a total of 61”.
- At various times, elements of the police and media were reluctant to discuss or report on grooming incidents for fears of upsetting “community tensions”.
- In 2017, a “total of 29 men from a Huddersfield grooming gang are charged but a reporting restriction prevents media from reporting on the case to avoid prejudicing other cases. The ban was criticised by far-right groups, with Tommy Robinson – also known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – jailed for 13 months (later reduced to nine months) after admitting contempt for filming outside a court during the trial”. Such reporting restrictions are commonplace, and the outcome for Yaxley-Lennon was entirely predictable.
- Between 2013 and now, there have been “10 inquiries and reports into the grooming gangs”.
- The Conservative Party was in power from 2010-2024, meaning they were the sitting government for the majority of the scandal’s timeline and for every inquiry and report (on 8 January, education secretary Bridget Phillipson “told Sky News’s Wilfred Frost the Conservative government did not implement any of the recommendations that came out of an eight-year national inquiry into grooming gangs published in 2022″).
- Notably, Labour leader and current prime minister Keir Starmer “was head of the Crown Prosecution Service for five years when grooming gangs were being investigated”.
Opportunists
Readers should understand that the Canary has a long history of criticising Starmer’s time as the director of public prosecutions, particularly in relation to his handling of the ‘Spy Cops’ scandal. As former Canary editor Emily Apple wrote in 2020:
Ultimately, Starmer was head of an organisation that supported and enabled the political policing many of us have spent years fighting. Even if he didn’t have the oversight of what was happening with spycops, he was happy being part of that system. And that’s without going into detail over the appalling decisions Starmer made regarding prosecuting the officers involved in the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson.
While we’re clearly no fan of Starmer and his Labour Party (nor of the Conservative Party they replaced), we’re also of the opinion that far-right figures are using this long-running scandal to stoke racial tensions and gain political capital.
Facts matter
Key to our belief are facts like the following:
- Under Elon Musk, Twitter reinstated Dom Lucre – a right-wing conspiracist – who shared an image of “child sexual abuse“. According to the Guardian, “Musk claimed only staff on X’s child exploitation team had seen the tweet, said the tweet was deleted and then restored the account after pressure from other rightwing accounts on the platform”.
- Also on Musk, a SpaceX flight attendant accused him of exposing himself and propositioning her for sex. His company “paid $250,000 for her silence“, as per Business Insider.
- Still on Musk, Axios reported in June 2024 that “SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk were hit on Wednesday with a lawsuit from eight former employees, who alleged they were illegally fired for raising concerns about sexual harassment and discrimination against women at the company” – many of the accusations involving Musk himself.
- Tommy Robinson’s now defunct English Defence League (EDL) was described as a “hotbed of sex offenders” by Hope Not Hate. It adds that since “its formation, there have been at least 20 members and supporters convicted of child sexual exploitation offences. At least 10 of these were active in the EDL while Lennon was still leading it, and we are yet to find a single condemnation from Lennon”.
- Nigel Farage has joked about the sexual assault allegations levied against his good friend Donald Trump.
The above is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the far right, demonstrating why you should never trust these people on anything.
Jewish Labour Movement and Ivor Caplin
Activists like Lowkey have highlighted Ivor Caplin’s links to the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), with Caplin having served as a chair for the organisation between 2018-2019:
Ivor Caplin was then arrested on suspicion of sending indecent images to an alleged 15 year old boy and attempting to meet with the child.pic.twitter.com/D9M9aGpeh7
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) January 11, 2025
a membership organisation of Labour supporting members of the Jewish Community and a formal affiliate of the Labour Party in the Uk since 1920
Its critics argue that JLM only supports members of the Jewish community who support Israel and its Zionist ideology.
Zionism is what the BDS movement and many others have described as a ‘settler colonialist project‘, with the group writing:
Starting in the 1880s, the Zionist movement set up colonies in Palestine and promoted Jewish mass immigration. The movement spread the false and deeply racist idea that Palestine was a land without people for a people without a land.
Zionist settler colonialism enjoyed the political support of Western imperial powers. Britain was appointed by the victors of World War I to govern Palestine and lead it toward independence. In 1917, Britain committed to facilitate the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine against the wishes of the indigenous Arab population. This commitment commitment set out in a letter by then UK foriegn secretary Arthur James Balfour and is known as the Balfour declaration.
Faced with resistance from the predominantly Arab indigenous population, the Zionist movement began to develop “transfer plans” from the early 1930s. In 1948, the Zionist movement carried out its plan of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population and created the state of Israel. This set of events is known to Palestinians as al-Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.
In an article examining the topic from both sides, the Conversation writes:
It can be argued that political Zionism exhibits both anticolonial and colonial aspirations.
On one hand, it seeks to give self-determination to the Jewish people in a land to which they were once native. On the other, given early Zionists were trying to convince European colonial powers to create the Jewish national home, it adopted some colonial rationalisations and often saw the existing population, both Arabs and native Jews, as inferior.
[Theodor Herzl – the ‘father’ of modern Zionism] rarely wrote about Arabs or other native populations, and when he did, he mused about how much their lives would be improved by the best of European and Jewish culture.
Israel’s settler tendencies have continued to this day – especially throughout the genocide in Gaza. Lowkey and others have reported on Israeli settlers who have been taking over Palestinian land:
An Israeli Army investigation found that the Israeli government is funding The Temple Institute, a settler group with the stated aim of demolishing Al-Aqsa.
It also found they permit membership of it as an alternative to military conscription. pic.twitter.com/VuXYBMUAJ5
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) November 17, 2023
More footage emerges of Zionist settler gangs destroying aid meant for Gaza.pic.twitter.com/cdtR53HN3F
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) May 13, 2024
At the 79th session of the UN General Assembly in September 2024, Israeli prime minister actually called for the creation of a ‘Greater Israel’. This would see Israel colonising parts of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria:
The Israeli regime's recent "Greater Israel" map, claiming territories in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, & Syria, simply echoes claims by its founders & Netanyahu's map theatrics at the UNGA, & "from the river to the sea" ambition. They never tried to hide their expantionist agenda! pic.twitter.com/Cpr7GxDpEk
— Embassy of the I.R. of Iran, Tokyo / 駐日イラン大使館 (@IraninJapan) January 11, 2025
This is the same Netanyahu who is on the record as saying things like the following:
Learning that Benjamin Netanyahu actively supported Hamas in order to undermine Palestine is so extraordinarily horrifying, I don't know what to say. From Haaretzhttps://t.co/6vKW42MmOy pic.twitter.com/ZyXRnnhDzy
— Big Joel (@biggestjoel) October 9, 2023
No double standards on Ivor Caplin
It’s vital that the police investigate Ivor Caplin, and that he’s held fully accountable for his crimes should he be found guilty. It’s also crucial that Labour clarify whether or not the “serious allegations” against Caplin were found to be proven, and whether these allegations should have been made public a long time ago.
At the same time, as reprehensible as Starmer and his Labour Party are, there should be no confusion on where the far-right stand on this topic. They don’t care about children; they don’t care about justice; they solely care about power.
Featured image via STOP Stings / Chris McAndrew – Wikipedia
