Labour’s painful truth

Labour’s anti-semitism row is a reckoning with its own history. There was a time when the party was not only anti-racist but predominantly Zionist. When an Arab coalition invaded Israel in 1973, Harold Wilson, then leader of the opposition, was incensed that Edward Heath refused to back the Israelis. One Labour MP suggested that some Jewish Britons had a dual loyalty – and Mr Wilson promptly sacked him from the shadow front bench.

But the sands were shifting beneath Mr Wilson’s feet. The young hard-left of the Seventies had dim memories of the horrors of the Second World War and were drawn to violent Arab nationalists – all part of a growing obsession with “victims”, divorced from old-fashioned notions of right and wrong. There are similarities between Jeremy Corbyn’s sympathy for the IRA and his history of sharing platforms with anti-israel groups, and he is far from alone in tolerating extremists as part of a subjective campaign for “justice”. The hard-left has been incubating in Labour for years. Now, it is in power.

Christine Shawcroft, for instance, has sat on Labour’s governing NEC for 19 years. This week it was reported that she had defended a council candidate who reposted an article on Facebook questioning whether or not the Holocaust happened (both parties deny wrongdoing). Ms Shawcroft has not resigned from the NEC. We can guess what Mr Wilson would have done: insisted she go. Mr Corbyn is silent. Moderate MPS who say they are disgusted need to face some painful facts about their party. Mr Corbyn’s grassroots popularity is an indictment not only of himself but of a movement that has abandoned moral authority.