Corbyn ‘made his party
JEREMY Corbyn was last night accused of turning the Labour Party into “a welcoming refuge for anti-Semites”.
An explosive dossier handed to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission tells of a “relentless flow” of abuse claims.
It includes 11 allegations that the leader has personally signalled that anti-Semitic views are “acceptable”.
Mr Corbyn and Labour officials categorically rejected the claims.
But the 53-page dossier, prepared by the Jewish Labour Movement for the EHRC probe, dealt a blow to Labour’s election campaign.
The authors, who spoke to 70 current and former party staff members, say: “Labour is no longer a safe space for Jewish people.
“The relentless flow of anti-Semitism is so unabating it proved a challenge to complete this submission.
“Incidents occur daily and have become normalised as the party finds more ways of ignoring, denying, relativising and accepting the anti-Semitism that has consumed it.
Hounded
“Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, he has made the party a welcoming refuge for anti-Semites.
“He has done that in a number of ways, including by publicly supporting anti-Semites and anti-Semitic tropes. Labour is cast in his image.”
The dossier alleges that Mr Corbyn promoted “known antiSemites to positions of power”, subverted bids to probe allegations, failed to protect Jewish members and allowed Jewish MPs to be hounded out.
One witness listed 22 examples of verbal abuse at constituency Labour Party meetings, including being called “a Tory Jew” and “Zio scum” and that “Hitler was right.”
The report claims several social media sites linked to Labour are “hotspots of anti-Semitic material”.
And attacking the leader, it says: “Mr Corbyn supported the artist Mear One after he painted a mural containing anti-Semitic tropes.”
The dossier also highlights a foreword Mr Corbyn wrote for “a book which argued banks and the press were controlled by Jews”, his comment that Zionists “don’t understand English irony” and joining a wreath-laying near the graves of Palestinian terrorists in Tunisia.
At aWestminster news conference launching the file yesterday, Sam Matthews, formerly acting director of Labour’s governance and legal department, claimed senior figures would intervene to block probes.
He said: “I witnessed the failure of processes to adequately deal with anti-Jewish racism. I witnessed daily interference, meaning my team and I were unable to do our jobs.”
Mr Matthews said his staff were “put in the intolerable position of... not having the support of those above us to tackle the problem.” He added: “That position was so intolerable that...by the end, I considered taking my own life.”
Former Labour MP Lord Mann said: “This devastates the lie that anti-Semitism within Labour is made up, is small-scale.”
Luciana Berger, who quit Labour over the row and is now a Lib Dem candidate, said: “The truth is there for all to see. I will be the thorn in Labour’s side until the perpetrators are held to account.”
But speaking on a campaign visit to Peterborough, Mr Corbyn said of the claims: “I completely reject that.
When I became leader there were no processes to deal with anti-Semitism. We introduced an appeals procedure and education process.”
A Labour spokesman added: “Anti-Semitism is an evil and we are committed to rooting it out. We are cooperating with the EHRC.
“Complaints relate to a minority of our members.”
The EHRC launched a probe into Labour over anti-Semitism last May.
The issue dominated the campaign last week after Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that “a new poison sanctioned from the top” had taken root in Labour. small