Police probe into anti-Semitic trolls backing Red Len
A Twitter account supporting the ally of Jeremy Corbyn targeted a rival with a smear campaign accusing him of having ‘shadowy backers’ in a ‘Jewish Mafia’.
The messages sent to Gerard Coyne, who is challenging Mr McCluskey for the leadership of the Unite union, are now being investigated by police.
It comes as Labour faces criticism for failing to expel former London mayor Ken Livingstone for repeatedly claiming that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism.
Mr Coyne, who is not Jewish, received the sinister messages after he did an interview with The Jewish Chronicle. In it, he said Mr McCluskey has spent too much time concentrating on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict when ‘for many of our members it is not something at the forefront of their minds’.
An apparent supporter of Mr McCluskey, using the Twitter name @1UnionBloke, sent Mr Coyne a slew of offensive messages on the social network.
One showed a picture of Mr Coyne next to a man with the Star of David on his body and brandishing a gun. The caption read: ‘Be warned @gerardcoyne has backing now!! Jewish Mafia.’
Other messages from the account included suggestions that Mr Coyne was pandering to the Jewish community in his leadership campaign.
One tweet said: ‘His anti anybody who isn’t Jewish is exposed. @gerard_coyne also reveals his shadowy backers. So @UniteforLen.’
Another Twitter post from a different account claimed Mr Coyne was ‘cosying up to powerful Jewish conservative supporters of Zionism and ready to sell his soul’.
Mr McCluskey’s campaign condemned the messages, but the politics website Guido Fawkes claimed followers of the @1UnionBloke account, which has been shut down, included Jennie Formby, a regional leader of Unite who is the mother of Mr McCluskey’s love child.
Last year Mr McCluskey insisted there ‘was no crisis of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party’ and said the row had been manipulated for ‘politi- cal aims’. Mr Livingstone was suspended from Labour this week over his Zionism remarks, but yesterday Mr Coyne joined growing calls for him to be expelled.
He said: ‘ Mr Livingstone’s comments and total lack of contrition are grotesque.
‘ The leadership of Unite seems to think its role in the Labour Party is to defend the indefensible. There is a troubling trend of racism within the Labour movement at the moment. We need to stamp this out.’
A spokesman for Mr McCluskey’s campaign said the Unite leader ‘does not want or condone any engagement by [his supporters] in online abuse’.
He added: ‘ Unite has also made it clear that any member who has made anti-Semitic comments is in breach of the union’s rules and will face disciplinary action.’
‘A troubling trend of racism’