SHAME ON YOU HARRIET
Labour MP Harman told to apologise after repeating Holocaust joke on TV
LABOUR was engulfed by a new anti-Semitism row yesterday after former deputy party leader Harriet Harman repeated a disgusting joke about the Holocaust on live TV.
Mrs Harman, a leading equality campaigner who chairs the Commons human rights committee, insisted she recounted the joke in order to show that anti-Semitic humour is “no laughing matter”.
But a leading Jewish charity demanded that she apologise. The row comes amid growing concerns over anti-Semitism in the Labour party. Mrs Harman was a guest on BBC1’s This Week programme on Thursday night.
During a discussion about unacceptable subjects for comedy, she said she had been branded “humourless” in the past for complaining about offensive jokes. She went on
to tell the joke as an example of the kind of material she objected to.
But her claim that presenter Andrew Neil would find the tasteless quip funny was rejected by the broadcaster, who turned his back on her and told her to “be quiet”.
Mrs Harman said: “I’ve long been accused of being a humourless feminist and I’ll give you two examples that I protested about because they were offensive and hurtful.
“So, this was a Guy’s Hospital rag magazine back in the day and people like Andrew say that these things are perfectly all right.”
She told the distasteful antiSemitic joke and then said: “That’s not funny.”
Cutting her short, Mr Neil responded: “We’ll stop with that one example and we won’t bother with the minute’s silence that you would dare to think what I would think about that, because you have no knowledge of that at all.”
As he turned to speak to another guest, Mrs Harman tried to interrupt in order to justify her decision to repeat the joke, only for Mr Neil to tell her: “Be quiet.”
He later explained his handling of the incident on Twitter, saying he was “appalled and even a little bit upset by what she said”.
Mr Neil wrote: “What was wrong was 1)Even to tell that so-called joke on live TV. 2)Claim I would like the joke. Appalling on both counts.”
The chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, Simon Johnson, demanded an apology from the Camberwell and Peckham MP for what he termed “a staggering error of judgment”.
He said: “I cannot recall being so disappointed in a politician. Harriet Harman must surely know better than to repeat a vile Holocaust joke, irrespective of the point she was trying to make. She must apologise and do so quickly.”
In a tweet released following Mr Johnson’s call for an apology, Mrs Harman said: “Anti-Semitic ‘jokes/ banter’ perpetuate discrimination and hatred. No laughing matter.”
She linked the tweet to an excerpt from her autobiography, A Woman’s Work, in which she said that after complaining about the joke to Guy’s Hospital and referring the matter to the Director for Public Prosecutions, she was accused of “over-reacting and being humourless” by a local newspaper. She said Jewish community groups were “deeply appreciative when the hospital apologised”.
The row came shortly after Mr Neil made a speech to a Holocaust Educational Trust dinner in which he warned of “the rise of antiSemitism on the far-Left”, which he said was “more dangerous than the knuckle-dragging Right”.
The incident has added to growing concerns over attacks on Jewish people by Labour party members. At the party conference this year in Brighton, Left-wing activists tried to have the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel banned from the party.
Last year leader Jeremy Corbyn was criticised for acting too slowly to take action over anti-Semitic remarks by MP Naz Shah and former London mayor Ken Livingstone.
He has also been attacked for sharing platforms with banned antiSemitic Islamic terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
And just this week he boycotted a dinner to commemorate the centenary of the founding of the state of Israel.