Ian Austin: Labour must boot out anti-Semites once and for all
Ian Austin has called for anti-Semites to be 'booted out' of Labour once and for all, warning: "It is not enough to say the party has a zero-tolerance approach to racism."
In an astonishing broadside against members of his own party, the Dudley North MP said it was 'shocking' that so many of them had been suspended or expelled for expressing anti-Semitic views.
It came after fellow Labour MP John Mann, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Semitism, said he received online abuse following an appearance on Question Time last week.
Jeremy Corbyn's party is in the grip of a prolonged row over anti-Semitism, with the Jewish Labour Movement claiming it had failed to deal with a 'vast backlog' of complaints.
Veteran MP Ken Livingstone is currently suspended and the subject of a long-running inquiry over claims he made that Zionists collaborated with Hitler.
Other high profile cases include former Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker, who was suspended after she referred to Jews as the 'chief financiers of the slave trade' and has since claimed she is being targeted by Israel.
Mr Austin told the Express & Star: "One of the reasons I joined the Labour Party as a teenager in Dudley was to oppose racism, so it is really shocking to see so many members, including an MP, suspended or expelled for anti-Semitism.
"More have been reported or investigated and it has been necessary to hold three inquiries into anti-Semitism.
"Senior figures have legitimised the myth that Jews were the chief financiers of the slave trade.
"Others have drawn outrageous comparisons between the actions of Israel and the crimes of the Nazis, or even said that Hitler supported Zionism.
"At our party conference we had the disgusting spectacle of a speaker at a fringe meeting asking the question: “Holocaust: yes or no” and leaflets being distributed to delegates quoting the words of Reinhard Heydrich – the architect of the Nazis’ Final Solution.
"It is not enough to say the party has a zero-tolerance approach to racism. Enough is enough. These people have no place in a decent political party and need to be booted out."
