Former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the party over his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) report into antisemitism in the Labour Party.
The government anti-racism watchdog report said the party had broken equality laws in its handling of anti-Semitism complaints.
The body found there were “serious failings” by the party’s leadership when it came to anti-Semitism, and that Labour had “inadequate processes” for handling complaints.
There were 23 instances of “inappropriate involvement” by Corbyn’s office and others in the 70 files examined in the report, the EHRC said, with interference happening more frequently in complaints of anti-Semitism than in other discrimination allegations.
Caroline Waters, interim chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said in a statement, “The Labour Party made a commitment to zero tolerance for anti-Semitism. Our investigation has highlighted multiple areas where its approach and leadership to tackling anti-Semitism was insufficient. This is inexcusable and appeared to be a result of a lack of willingness to tackle anti-Semitism rather than an inability to do so.”
“It is encouraging to see the party’s new leadership has committed to implementing our recommendations in full,” continued Waters. “If the party truly wants to rebuild trust with its members and the Jewish community, it must acknowledge the impact that numerous investigations and years of failure to tackle anti-Semitism has had on Jewish people, and take swift, sincere action to improve.”
In a Facebook post, the former Labour leader wrote that antisemitism within the party was “dramatically overstated” by his opponents and the media, a combination he said “hurt Jewish people”.
The new Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, had earlier said: “If – after all the pain, all the grief, and all the evidence in this report – there are still those who think there’s no problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party, that it’s all exaggerated, or a factional attack, then, frankly, you are part of the problem too.
“And you should be nowhere near the Labour Party either.”
Joe Glasman, Head of Political and Government Investigations at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said in a statement: ”This is a hugely significant turning point and an indicator of real change and accountability at last. We referred Labour to the EHRC precisely because it was not taking our complaints against Mr Corbyn seriously. Four years since our first complaint, Labour has finally begun to take action. Mr Corbyn is part of the problem, and at last our complaints against him and other sitting Labour MPs who seemed untouchable, are now being acted upon.”