Anti-semitism row ‘stirred up to attack Corbyn’, says ally

As pressure mounts on Labour leader, Christine Shawcroft says complaints are politically motivated

A CLOSE ally of Jeremy Corbyn who was forced to resign over a Holocaust row has claimed that Labour’s antisemitism problem is a ruse “stirred up to attack” the Labour leader.

Christine Shawcroft, who was forced to step down as the chairman of Labour’s disciplinary panel on Thursday, told supporters yesterday that the allegations against Mr Corbyn “absolutely beggars belief ”.

In comments that also appeared to undermine Mr Corbyn’s pledge to clean up his party, Ms Shawcroft claimed that concerns about anti-semitism were politically motivated and an attempt to undermine the party leader.

The row came as an official complaint made against Mr Corbyn by members of the Jewish community was last night dismissed by the Labour Party. The complaint, submitted by the Campaign Against Anti-semitism (CAA), alleged that the Labour leader’s failure to stamp out hatred during the past three years had brought his party into disrepute.

The charity lodged an official complaint on Wednesday, but less than 24 hours after its receipt was acknowledged, sources close to Mr Corbyn said that it had been decided it did not cross the threshold for investigation.

The CAA, which is organising a mass protest to demand that Labour take the issue seriously, is now considering all legal options. Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn came under growing pressure from his own MPS to suspend Ms Shawcroft after she was found to have attacked Labour Party staff for suspending Alan Bull, a Peterborough activist, for sharing an article describing the Holocaust as a “hoax”.

It followed a letter sent to Mr Corbyn on Thursday evening, signed by 39 Labour MPS and peers, which demanded that he live up to his promise to purge the party of anti-semites and apologists. But in a statement published yesterday morning, Ms Shawcroft insisted she did not support Holocaust denial.

Referring to Mr Bull’s case, she again insisted she had not seen his message and had simply been “trying to support members affected by all the shenanigans around council selections”.

She later deleted the statement after an angry backlash, insisting that she was “deeply sorry for what I did”.

However, her earlier comments reignited calls from Labour MPS that she be ousted, with prominent backbencher Jess Phillips stating that she was “sick to death … of people blaming processes for not being able to take decisions.”

Siobhain Mcdonagh, the MP for Mitcham and Morden, demanded that Mr Corbyn put his party before his friendship with Ms Shawcroft. “I know that leadership is tough and that they have probably been friends for 30 or 40 years,” she said. “But when you are the leader, if somebody does something as abhorrent as support somebody who is a Holocaust denier, you have got to forget the past.”

It came as Mr Corbyn faced growing criticism for his handling of Labour’s anti-semitism crisis, with Jewish leaders, MPS and anti-racism campaigners demanding that he prove his sincerity by taking immediate action.

They were joined by Tony Blair, the former prime minister, who, in a veiled attack on Mr Corbyn, warned that blurring the lines between Israel and Jews risked taking Britain back to the antisemitic tropes seen in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph (below), Mr Blair says that politicians “cannot sit back and let extremism and intolerance become an accepted part of our public discourse”.

In its annual Passover message, the Jewish Leadership Council said there was an “overt groundswell” of Leftwing activists who were unwilling to accept that their party has a problem with anti-semitism.

In his own message to the Jewish community, published yesterday, Mr Corbyn admitted that he had struggled to get a grip on the crisis which is fast enveloping his party, telling members that “we all need to do better”.

He said that, while it was easy to “denounce anti-semitism when you see it in other countries, in other political movements … it is sometimes harder to see it when it is closer to home.

“In the fight against anti-semitism, I am your ally and I always will be.”

‘If somebody does something as abhorrent as support a Holocaust denier, you have got to forget the past’