After pressure from Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Leader of Sandwell Council has been suspended by the Labour Party pending an investigation and has resigned from her leadership role.
Cllr Yvonne Davies is being investigated by the Party over tweets she sent in 2018, one of which promoted a petition calling for a parliamentary debate over whether Israel has an “improper influence” over British politics, a notion reminiscent of historically popular claims of excessive Jewish power in national politics. In another tweet, Cllr Davies linked to a story titled “Is Israel’s hand behind the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn?”, alongside which she commented: “This makes interesting reading if anyone is wanting to understand where all this emphasis on Labour and antisematism (sic) comes from…”
According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis” is an example of antisemitism.
A complaint regarding Cllr Davies submitted to Labour reportedly accused her of “breaching Labour’s social media policy”.
In a cabinet meeting yesterday, Cllr Davies resigned as Leader, having been elected to the post a year ago. In her eighteen-minute resignation statement, she reportedly criticised “the white male old guard” who sought “only to preserve their own power base for its own sake”.
The local authority has seen multiple changes in leadership in recent years and has reportedly been dogged by scandal.
On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
