LABOUR’S DAY OF SHAME

Anti-Semitism crisis deepens for Corbyn as race watchdog probes claims party ‘acted unlawfully’

LABOUR faced one of the most shameful days in its history yesterday after a formal inquiry was launched into whether it has victimised Jews.

In an explosive intervention, the equalities watchdog said it ‘suspects’ the party has committed ‘ unlawful acts’ in its handling of the anti-Semitism crisis.

Last night, Labour rejected claims it was institutionally racist, but leader Jeremy Corbyn remained silent over the probe – even turning away from TV cameras after a reporter questioned him on his doorstep.

Labour MPs described it as a ‘truly disgraceful day’, while deputy party leader Tom Watson spoke of his ‘utter shame’.

Only once before has the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a formal inquiry into a political party – and that was the far- Right BNP. The EHRC will investigate whether Mr Corbyn’s party has ‘unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish’ – and whether senior staff responded properly to anti-Semitism allegations against its members.

If Labour fails to accept its findings, it could be taken to court and fined.

The watchdog can force the party to hand over emails and texts which could reveal damning evidence of anti-Semitism cases

being covered up by senior figures. Jewish groups also expect officials to interview Mr Corbyn and Labour general secretary Jennie Formby on what they know about the alleged failings.

As Labour found itself engulfed by controversy:

Alastair Campbell was thrown out of the party for voting for the Liberal Democrats in last week’s European elections – sparking claims the news was leaked in a bid to bury the anti-Semitism probe;

A Labour MP said Tony Blair’s former spin doctor was ‘expelled quicker than a man who threatened to kill me and quicker than a man in my local party who denied the Holocaust’;

A string of other party figures – including former defence secretary Bob Ainsworth – were also expelled for refusing to vote for Labour over its Brexit stance;

The party’s chaos over a second referendum continued, with MP Lisa Nandy warning it would be a ‘final breach of trust’.

Last night, Jewish MP Dame Margaret Hodge – who has faced abuse from Corbynites for standing up to the leader over antiSemitism – lamented ‘a truly disgraceful day for the Labour Party’.

She added: ‘Corbyn has completely failed from day one to take this issue seriously. The consequence is a full statutory investigation. He should hang his head in shame.’

Mr Watson said: ‘I have been warning privately and publicly that we risked a vortex of shame if we didn’t do everything in our power to root out anti-Semitism in our ranks. I feel utter shame that this investigation is necessary.’

Luciana Berger – who blamed ‘institutional’ anti-Semitism when she quit the Labour Party to join Change UK in February – added: ‘For anyone who might look to play this down, the threshold to initiate this process is extremely high. That the Labour Party has even met the evidentiary threshold is damning.’

The EHRC – which was founded by Tony Blair’s government – said it acted after receiving three dossiers showing examples where antiSemitism was not dealt with properly. They were compiled by the Campaign Against AntiSemitism, the Jewish Labour Movement and the Labour Against Anti-Semitism group.

The dossiers are believed to contain evidence that senior aides of Mr Corbyn intervened to downgrade punishments for anti-Semites.

The EHRC said it was ‘launching a formal investigation to determine whether the Labour Party has unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish’.

The watchdog will look at how effectively Labour has responded to a string of complaints about the party’s antiSemitism problem.

Campaign Against AntiSemitism said Mr Corbyn had changed Labour into a ‘home for hatred in British politics’, while the Jewish Labour Movement said: ‘For years we have been warning that the Labour Party’s response to antiSemitism within our ranks has been woeful at best, and institutionally racist at worst.’ Euan Phillips, of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said the inquiry was a ‘tragedy’.

Labour said: ‘Labour is fully committed to the support, defence and celebration of the Jewish community and is implacably opposed to antiSemitism in any form. We reject any suggestion that the party does not handle antiSemitism complaints fairly and robustly, or that the party has acted unlawfully.’

Although the majority of my mother’s family was murdered during the holocaust, when I was a child growing up in North london in the Fifties and early Sixties, I was not particularly concerned with anti-Semitism.

If Jews were menaced in Britain, we were certainly not aware of it. We were free to practise Judaism, to walk the streets in fancy dress at Purim, to light our candles at Chanukkah. Nobody turned a hair. But in recent years, our sense of security has been replaced by trepidation.

the man who shoulders a significant portion of the blame for that is Jeremy Corbyn.

Shame

I write as the first woman rabbi in Britain ever to run a synagogue, and as someone who has just written a book on anti-Semitism in all its guises around the world — with several pages devoted to the shocking level it has reached in labour under Corbyn.

When I heard yesterday that the Equality and human Rights Commission had finally decided to launch a formal inquiry into the labour Party, I was not surprised — even though it is only the second British political party to be formally investigated for ethnic or religious discrimination. (the first was the BNP in 2009).

the investigation into her Majesty’s opposition represents a new low in British politics. And Corbyn and his blinkered acolytes should hang their heads in shame.

Yet the fact is the Commission’s inquiry is well overdue.

this, after all, is a party that took three years to boot out activist Jackie Walker, a prolific anti-Semite who claimed Jews controlled the slave trade and benefited from the holocaust — but just 36 hours to expel Alastair Campbell after he revealed he voted for the liberal Democrats last week.

A party whose leader has happily shared platforms with members of hamas, a terrorist organisation determined to wipe every Jew off the face of the Earth. And a party that received 673 complaints of anti- Semitism in just ten months, but expelled only 12 members.

there can be no doubt: under Corbyn, labour has been transformed from a party that once led Britain’s fight against racism into one that turned its back on individuals on account of their race.

As labour stalwart Dame Margaret hodge, a secular Jew who lost several relatives in the holocaust, said yesterday: ‘this is a truly disgraceful day for the labour Party — one of the most depressing in my 56 years as a member.’

My own parents supported labour. they would be turning in their graves if they could witness what has happened.

the labour they belonged to was a beacon of tolerance, a party of political titans like Clement Attlee whose family took in a Jewish refugee from the Kindertransport before the war. under Corbyn, it has become a party where bigotry has been allowed to flourish.

he has made as little effort as possible to investigate labour’s festering swamp of anti-Semitism.

labour’s own ‘official’ inquiry into it, for example, ruled that the party was not ‘overrun by anti-Semitism’, but that there was an ‘ occasionally toxic atmosphere’.

Making no attempt to get to the poisonous roots of the problem, it failed to mention the case of oxford university’s labour Club, whose chairman, Alex Chalmers, resigned publicly in 2016 after members repeatedly used the phrase ‘Zio’ — a derogatory term for Jews usually confined to far-Right websites.

Nor did the report, led by labour’s own Baroness Chakrabarti, tackle in any depth the way some labour supporters were talking about Jews.

take the Bognor Regis labour councillor who posted the comment ‘Jews drink blood and rape children’ on social media. or Mohammed Yasin, labour’s West Midlands regional organiser, (not to be confused with the labour MP with a similar name) who was finally suspended in December 2018 after more than two years of offensive social media posts, including 9/11 conspiracy theories, praising a homophobic preacher and blaming ‘all wars in the world’ on Jewish people.

these posts were made mostly while working for the labour Party.

online, the malignant influence of social media has acted as a scatter gun for antiSemitic messages.

In September 2018, for example, a dossier was passed to the Metropolitan Police setting out 45 cases of online anti- Jewish abuse by labour supporters.

‘We shall rid the Jews, who are a cancer on us all,’ read one chilling message.

Many of these radical socialists reel off age-old stereotypes that have echoed down the centuries in Europe, such as the beliefs that Jews exert a control over global finance or are ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ without loyalty or solidarity.

Corbyn himself has expressed similar views.

Attacks

he once defended a vile, antiSemitic mural in East london that featured a group of hooknosed bankers playing monopoly on a board which rested on the naked backs of the poor.

he complained on another occasion that British Zionists ‘don’t understand English irony’ and ‘don’t want to study history’. In Corbyn’s mind, Jews living here are still foreign, attached to an alien dogma and unable to appreciate British humour.

With views like this it is no surprise the labour leader was praised last month by hamas for his support.

the really pernicious thing is that when labour’s leader legitimises such prejudiced opinions, it encourages the cancer of anti- Semitism to spread not just in the labour Party, but elsewhere too. this is reprehensible behaviour at a time when anti- Semitism is on the rise — and not just in Britain.

Across Europe, the foaming peaks of this tidal wave of hate can be found in swastikas at pro- Palestinian rallies, the denial of the holocaust, attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools, and attempts to close down Jewish student societies on university campuses.

Just this week, germany’s commissioner on antiSemitism warned german Jews not to wear traditional kippahs in public following a rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

Violence

In chilling comments yesterday, german Chancellor Angela Merkel said: ‘there is to this day not a single Synagogue not a single daycare centre for Jewish children, not a single school for Jewish children that does not need to be guarded by german policemen.’

Fortunately, Britain has yet to plumb the depths of antiJewish violence that has gripped parts of Europe — although anxiety is spreading.

that is little comfort to the uK’s 250,000 Jews, many of whom feel that their very existence is now under threat.

If Corbyn’s bigoted worldview goes unchallenged, antiSemitism will grow like a contagion. this is why the human Rights Commission’s inquiry is so essential.

For decades, I and other Jews relished growing up in a country that had been a safe haven during the war and in a Europe that seemed determined to learn the lessons from the horrors of the Nazi genocide.

But almost 75 years after the Nazi extermination camps were closed, anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head again.

the lessons of history should have been learned by now. Not least by a labour leader turning a blind eye to them.