Vile tweets of student, 19, who shared rally stage with Jeremy
A YOUNG activist who introduced Jeremy Corbyn at a rally has quit her post in Labour’s student wing after it emerged she wrote a string of racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic tweets.
Bethany Barker, who welcomed the Labour leader on to the stage at his local election launch last month, sent offensive messages about ‘n****rs’, ‘f****ts’ and ‘Jew caps’.
Last night, the 1 -year-old history and politics student resigned as general secretary of Nottingham University’s Labour Society after her schoolgirl tweets from 2012 to 2014 surfaced.
In one message from 2013, she wrote: ‘I cooked chicken and rice, supporting the n****r race.’ In another tweet, she joked: ‘My dad just said I’m going to black myself up for my birthday tomorrow, and be a n****r for a day.’
Miss Barker also referred to the Jewish skullcap as a ‘Jew cap’ and separately wrote: ‘May just become a gypsy so it can become socially exceptable (sic) too (sic) dress like a s*ut.’ In response to a tweet about the jewellery firm Pandora ‘knowing your mood’, she tweeted: ‘It’s a jewellery company, you f*****g f****t, it will never know your mood.’
Miss Barker was praised by Mr Corbyn after she was picked to introduce him at the rally in Newark, Nottinghamshire. He said: ‘Thank you for that introduction, Bethany, and for all that you do in mobilising our student members.’ The row over the offensive tweets comes after Labour has repeatedly been plunged into controversy over anti-Semitism. Last month former London mayor Ken Livingstone escaped expulsion from the party despite making repeated claims about Hitler and Zionism. Miss Barker said last night: ‘I’m absolutely horrified and beyond disgusted about these tweets and they are in no [way] representative of the views I hold now. I have no recollection of writing these tweets and I am unequivocally sorry.’ A Labour spokesman said: ‘We don’t comment on individuals’ membership status.’