‘We should have marched to shuls’: Momentum activist

V AN EX-LABOUR member who sparked outrage last year by urging the local party to “march” and protest outside a synagogue has doubled down on those comments in a discussion with other Brighton and Hove Labour Momentum activists.

Amanda Bishop — who is believed to have left the party following her suspension from Labour over the April 2019 comments — this week wrote: “And just for the record, we should have marched to synagogues, churches, council officers, Labour offices and any other institutions where these bastards hang out.”

She added: “They are the ones that have created any fear that now exists in the Jewish community. It is they are antisemitic.”

One horrified Labour member in Brighton told the JC: “It is astonishing that Amanda has attempted to double down on her call for Brighton Labour members to mount a protest outside a synagogue.

“She may not be in the party any more, but most of the people on the Brighton Momentum forum still are.

“The concerning thing is how her latest remarks received not the slightest bit of condemnation.”

Last year, Ms Bishop had prompted fury when she called for the march to a synagogue to protest at the suspension from the party of local council candidate Alex Braithwaite.

Miss Braithwaite was suspended in April 2019 over her posts on social media. One such post claimed that Israel was “giving African migrants 90 days to leave the country so they don’t effect [sic] Israeli bloodline. They must leave or they will be jailed or murdered”.

Returning to discuss the issue on the Brighton Momentum forum on Sunday, Ms Bishop said: “I’m also an atheist and respect religious people but I cannot abide some who preach hatred in the name of their God.”

She claimed that while living in South Africa she “had a long battle with a priest of the local church.”

Ms Bishop added that the confrontation, which took place “in the middle of the 1990s”, had emerged after the priest made racist remarks about black people. She said: “My husband had to restrain me from physically assaulting him.”

Asked about her violent reaction, she told another Momentum activist: “I wanted to slap his face, Val.”

My husband had to restrain me from assaulting him’