Labour failed to take action after reports of anti-Semitism

LABOUR Party members who posted online that “Jews are the problem” and “Heil Hitler” have not been expelled despite being reported for anti-Semitism more than a year ago.

A leaked dossier of files reveals the party is failing to take action against hundreds of members who have been subjected to complaints under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

In one case, a trade union official was allowed to rejoin the party despite sharing material online claiming that Jewish Israelis were behind 9/11.

In another, a sitting councillor in Lancashire was readmitted after complaining about “Jewish” media attacks. She defended her comments, claiming she meant Jewish as “a blanket term”.

The leaked emails, reported in today’s The Sunday Times, also reveal Thomas Gardiner, a Corbyn ally and the chief of the party’s governance and legal unit, halted efforts of a staff member to fast-track a complaint made against a member who condemned two Jewish MPs for being “s----stirring c--buckets” in the “pay of Israel”.

Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, told the newspaper found the dossier “deeply shocking” and admitted the party still hadn’t got to grips with handling anti-Semitism.

A Labour spokesman said: “These figures are not accurate. The Labour Party takes all complaints of anti-Semitism extremely seriously and we are committed to rooting it out. All complaints are fully investigated. We can’t comment on individual cases.”

It comes after a Labour official defended an activist under investigation for anti-Semitism by insisting comments she made, which had been condemned for playing down the Holocaust, could simply be “legitimately held beliefs”.

A series of emails between officials suggests they did not regard complaints of anti-Semitism levelled against Jackie Walker to be serious.

It launched an investigation into Ms Walker following complaints about a Facebook post she wrote in February 2016, in which she said: “Millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews … and many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean.”

Following the complaints Ms Walker, who claims Jewish heritage, was suspended from the party, but reinstated after a few weeks.