Labour’s discipline chief quits over Holocaust activist

LABOUR’S head of discipline quit last night after it emerged she had opposed the suspension of an apparent Holocaust denier, it has emerged.

Christine Shawcroft stood down after it was revealed she emailed colleagues to demand an activist, Alan Bull, be allowed back into the party after he posted an offensive link.

Mr Bull had been suspended after he posted a link to a Facebook article titled “international Red Cross report confirms the holocaust of six million Jews is a hoax”. But in an email sent on Sunday Ms Shawcroft claimed the post had been “taken out of context”, according to the Daily Mail.

Last night Ms Shawcroft said she was “deeply sorry” for defending the post and announced her resignation. She said: “I have decided to stand down as Chair of the Disputes Panel to ensure my wrong and misguided questions on this case do not cause doubt or anxiety about our processes.”

Last night, there were calls for Ms Shawcroft, a director of Momentum, to be kicked off Labour’s National Executive Committee. It comes as plans to bolster Labour’s complaints process to deal with an influx of anti-semitic abuse were abandoned, The Daily Telegraph has learnt, as it emerged John Woodcock, a critic of Jeremy Corbyn’s, was reported to be on the verge of resigning the whip and sitting as an independent in protest at his leader’s stance on anti-semitism and Russia.

Sources have told this newspaper that job adverts for nine new regional governance officers to investigate complaints were posted online before being pulled earlier this year because the party did not sign off on the money.

Party sources told The Daily Telegraph that the complaints procedure to report anti-semitic abuse is so complex and “toxic” that the true number of abuse claims could be in the thousands. Re- ports earlier this week suggested there are 74 claims outstanding and many more which have been reported. Jewish leaders have demanded Mr Corbyn take concrete steps to prove his commitment to rooting out anti-semitism in his party.

He is under pressure after a number of his own MPS joined a protest in Westminster Square earlier this week, forcing him to apologise for saying an anti-semitic cartoon should not have been removed. Labour declined to comment on the record.

‘I have decided to stand down to ensure my wrong and misguided questions do not cause doubt or anxiety’