Lord Mann tells Sir Keir Starmer to outlaw use of “Zionist” as a term of abuse
Lord Mann has told Sir Keir Starmer to outlaw the use of the word “Zionist” in the Labour Party, as well as the term “Zionism”, as terms of abuse.
The Government’s Independent Advisor on Antisemitism gave several pieces of advice to the Labour leader, including not wavering from the International Definition of Antisemitism and, “if he wants to really embed comprehensive anti-racism including antisemitism across the Labour Party”, to ban the use of the words in the context of “hatred, abuse [or] contempt”.
Lord Mann made the comments in an online discussion with a Jewish charity.
Shami Chakrabarti (now Baroness Chakrabarti after she received a peerage from Jeremy Corbyn following her whitewash report into Labour antisemitism in 2016), recommended in her infamous report that the term “Zio” – an epithet made to look like the word ‘Nazi’ and exclusively used for abuse of Jews – be banned from use in the Party.
Sir Keir has apologised to the Jewish community for Labour’s institutional antisemitism, but despite his pledges to take action, none has yet been forthcoming and he has failed to address some new instances in breach of his election promises.
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.
