The Labour Party is increasingly anti-Semitic

Tom Harris

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The influx of anti-Israel far Left supporters has worsened the bias of the PLP against Jewish people

Does Labour, my party, have a problem with anti-Semitism? When someone like Gerry Downing, a member of the Socialist Fight organisation, can demand that the “Jewish problem” be addressed, and then apply and gain party membership (albeit briefly), it’s clear that it might. And when Vicky Kirby, Labour’s former candidate in Woking, who was suspended after tweeting “What do you know abt Jews? They’ve got big noses and support Spurs. lol” gets readmitted to the party, one feels still greater unease.

Brought up in the west of Scotland, I was only too familiar with the curse of religious bigotry. I was well aware of the reasons why enmity existed between the Protestant and Catholic communities – although, to my parents’ credit, they never encouraged us to give it houseroom. Similarly, although there were no black faces among the population of my small Ayrshire town in the Seventies, I knew all about racism. But anti-Semitism? What on earth was that all about?

“Unfortunately for Labour, the election of Corbyn as its leader has thrown a spotlight on a nasty kind of politics that, until last year, the media were content to ignore because of its irrelevance”

Only as an adult did I become more aware of the (and I can think of no more appropriate word) snobbery that is still exhibited towards Jews by people who, frankly, should know better. As in so many other areas, anti-Semitism has been an issue that feeds the Left’s unjustified self-righteousness. It’s a problem for the upper classes, we tell ourselves. And when we say “upper classes” we mean, of course, the Conservative Party.

There’s no doubt some truth in that, or at least there has been in the past. It’s a matter of record that Jewish Tory MPs like Edwina Currie and Leon Brittan suffered anti-Semitic barbs from a minority of their parliamentary colleagues at least occasionally, if not consistently.

Historically, the anti-Semitic label has been too often used carelessly: the Zionist Labour MP and cabinet minister Richard Crossman once branded his own party leader, Clement Attlee, and his foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, as anti-Semitic because of their reluctance to support the creation of Israel in 1948.

But Labour today is no longer the party of Attlee, or Crossman or even Blair. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, while no anti-Semite himself, has rarely hesitated to share platforms – or tea on the terrace of the House of Commons – with men who promote the blood libel (that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals) or with those who encourage followers to paint graffiti declaring: “Hoax gas chambers built in Hollywood”. Such men are without a shadow of a doubt anti-Semites, Jew-haters.

Dyab Abou Jahjah (centre) and Jeremy Coirbyn (right) Photo: twitter.com/Abou​jahjah

Unfortunately for Labour, the election of Corbyn as its leader has thrown a spotlight on a nasty kind of politics that, until last year, the media were content to ignore because of its irrelevance. Corbyn’s association with, and friendship of, the Hamas terrorist organisation is a good starting point: here is an organisation which, far from denying its anti-Semitism, proudly states its commitment to killing Jews in its own constitution.

The outspoken Labour MP John Mann has raised the recent growth in party membership as a root cause of Labour’s current anti-Semitism problem: hatred of Israel – real, blind, vicious, hatred – is felt most keenly and most loudly by those on the extreme Left, many of them Trotskyites who joined to shore up Mr Corbyn’s leadership and who see him as the world’s last best hope of overturning capitalism and, they hope, Israel while he’s at it. Corbyn undoubtedly raised the expectations of such people by attending a Labour Friends of Israel reception at last year’s party conference, then pointedly refused to allow the word “Israel” to pass his lips.

John Mann has warned of an anti-semitism row

Read more here: The Labour Party is (…) anti-Semitic

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