‘It is my mission to make Jews welcome’
A LEFT wing activist has defended her appointment as head of the Labour Party’s disputes panel — which oversees disciplinary cases including antisemitism allegations — following alarm over her past defence of Ken Livingstone.
Claudia Webbe, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, was elected on Tuesday during a meeting of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) equalities group.
She told the JC she had been “hurt to the core” to hear Labour members’ experiences of antisemitism.
Ms Webbe was speaking after Richard Angell, director of the centrist Labour group Progress, accused her of allowing “antisemitic tropes to be uttered unchallenged” during an event at Labour Party conference.
She said: “I find antisemitism abhorrent and I want the party to be a place that doesn’t just say it welcomes everyone, it makes them feel it.”
She said she would not ignore “the concerns of the Jewish community. I have experienced racism myself so I know what it feels like. It is my mission to make the Jewish community feel welcome.”
Ms Webbe said she did not condone Mr Livingstone’s
Claudia Webbe 2005 comments in which he likened a Jewish journalist to a Nazi guard, nor did she support his remarks about Hitler and Zionism.
But she stood by her letter to the Guardian in defence of the former Mayor of London in 2006 after he was suspended following his encounter with Oliver Finegold. She worked as an adviser to Mr Livingstone and said his suspension “smacked in the face of true democracy”. Ms Webbe chaired a debate on rule changes relating to Jew-hate at Labour’s 2017 conference at which antisemitic tropes were heard.
“I had to give people on all sides a chance to speak,” she told the JC. “I was not aware of antisemitism and if I was I would have said something. It is not true to say I allowed antisemitism. “Fighting antisemitism is something that I take seriously. I am the best person for the job.”
Ms Webbe said it was unacceptable disciplinary cases had taken months or years to deal with. She was elected after Christine Shawcroft quit the role when a leaked email revealed she backed a party member over alleged Holocaust denial.