Police probe Labour anti-Semitism dossier

JEREMY Corbyn was last night under increasing pressure after police launched a criminal inquiry into accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party.

Scotland Yard chief Cressida Dick said it “appears there may have been crime committed”.

In September she was passed a leaked internal Labour dossier detailing 45 cases being looked at in a party probe.

They involved posts on social media by apparent party members, including one which read: “We shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all.”

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dick stressed Labour itself was not under investigation.

Blind

She added: “However, if somebody passes us material which they say amounts to a crime we have a duty to look at that and not just dismiss it.

“We are now investigating some of that material because it appears there may have been crime committed,” she told the BBC’s Today programme.

“I hope we will be able to clear that up very quickly.”

The development will encourage critics of Mr Corbyn who say he is willfully blind to anti-Semitism in his party.

Labour MP John Mann said that if the police probe led to prosecutions, the party leadership would face questions about keeping the cases to itself.

Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said: “If this does one thing it will be to silence a very small number of people who believe that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in my party or in other parties.”

Joe Glasman, of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which reported the dossier to Commissioner Dick, said it contained more than 80 pages of “anti-Semitic hatred” by purported party members “including numerous admissions of guilt, but the Labour Party kept the dossier secret and did not even tell Jewish Labour MPs directly threatened within it, despite police considering threats to their safety so severe as to warrant special protection”.

A Labour spokesman said: “The party has a robust system for investigating complaints of alleged breaches of Labour Party rules by its members.”