► Uproar in the downpour over Labour antisemitism
Leading figures unite in the rain to condemn Labour’s failure to deal with hate
MPS AND communal leaders have addressed a rally in Manchester against antisemitism, warning senior Labour figures that they were “playing with fire” by “tolerating vicious attitudes towards those who challenge racism”.
Hundreds turned out in the rain to hear speakers including the Chief Rabbi, Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl, and MPs including Dame Margaret Hodge and Dame Louise Ellman.
Marie van der Zyl said that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn “calls himself a militant opponent of antisemitism, yet we have seen no end to this crisis, which is of Labour’s own making.
“Labour should be concentrating on the great issues to affect our country… yet they chose to spend the summer picking a fight with the Jews.
“People used to criticise Jeremy Corbyn for his apathy. But now who can deny his own complicity?”
Dame Louise, the Jewish Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, described herself as “absolutely horrified by the sinister statements by some major trade union leaders demonising the Jewish community”.
She accused Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union, of “blaming us for antisemitism, and maligning us for speaking out against it”, and described how last week, Mark Serwotka, leader of the PCS union, “claimed that Labour antisemitism was created by Israel to cover up its alleged atrocities.”
She added: “I say to Len McCluskey, and to Mark Serwotka and to any others who are considering repeating their slanders — you are playing with fire. You would not dare treat any other minority of this country in this way.”
Dame Margaret, who recently told Mr Corbyn to his face that he was “an antisemite and a racist”, described how she “never dreamt that my identity as a Jew and my work as a public servant of the Labour Party would lead me to a rally protesting against antisemitism in my party… but it has.
“In the 2010 election, I had fought and resoundingly defeated the fascist Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, in Barking.
“When I took him on, I expected to receive a lot of antisemitic abuse. But the antisemitism tropes I’ve received in the last year or so are greater in number and more horrid in content, than what I was subjected to by Nick Griffin and the BNP some ten years ago.”
Jonathan Goldstein, the chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, said of Labour: “Enough of treating the Jews with contempt. Enough of failing to discipline racist party members.
“Enough of being accomplices to the spreading of lies and venom about Jews. Enough of tolerating vicious attitudes towards those who challenge racism. Enough of engaging in antisemitic tropes.
“The last thing we want to be doing is a having a public spat with Her Majesty’s Opposition. But we have no choice. This needs to be put right. This is about our freedom and security in this country.
“When a minority experiences racism, it should not have to take to the streets to be taken seriously.”
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis described how there were “two Britains” — one “where antisemitic incidents are at an all-time high… in which Jewish schools, our synagogues, our communal facilities, exist behind walls, gates and guards, in order to protect us … in which people who previously were members of the British National Party and the Ku Klux Klan are praising public comments about the Jews which have been uttered by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.”
But, he said, there was another Britain, in “which we can walk the streets of this country with a kippah on our heads without fear… in which society is proud to have a Jewish community in its midst and views us as an essential and integral part of the fabric of British society.
“So our question to everyone living in Britain today is — in which Britain do you want to live in the future? Is it going to be a Britain that will make us proud, or will bring us shame.”
Other speakers included Ivan Lewis, the Jewish MP for Bury South, who described how one of his sons had drafted a letter of resignation from the Labour Party, while another had expressed how he no longer felt confident of his future in this country. Others were Labour MPs Lucy Powell, James Frith and Kate Green, and Conservative MPs Chris Green and Mary Robinson. Home Secretary Sajid Javid also sent a message of support. Elizabeth Arif-Fear, a Muslim woman living in London, had travelled to attend the rally: “I decided to come today because I’m not happy with the current situation,” she said, “in terms of how widespread antisemitism is, and how people often don’t understand the problem regarding antisemitism in the UK today. For me, this isn’t a political thing, it’s a human thing.” Samuel Jayson, an 18-year-old Jewish Mancunian — who said he had come “to stand up in a public space, in the public eye, against racism” — concurred: “It’s so important that people from different backgrounds — not just Jewish people — are here today.