Sara Conway, Labour candidate for Finchley and Golders Green, says she did not mean to say antisemitism is being “weaponised”
The Labour Party’s parliamentary candidate for Finchley and Golders Green has said she did not mean to claim that antisemitism has been “whipped up” and “weaponised by certain media commentators”. Instead, she claims that she just meant that the “far-right” has “weaponised” antisemitism.
Sara Conway, who is currently a Labour councillor in Barnet representing Burnt Oak, had said that she was “not trying to dismiss or push back on anything at all but I think there has been an element…of the press and right-wing commentators that has drummed this up to such a level that it then becomes, if you look on Twitter, an endless back and forth that doesn’t work”.
Ms Conway noted that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party, which was opened following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
However Ms Conway has now sought to clarify her language, tweeting: “I used the wrong word by saying weaponised. I was referring to far-right commentators particularly on Twitter who use this issue as a political football to create polarisation and division. Antisemitism is a very real problem and I was in no way referring those of us fighting it.”
Claiming that antisemitism allegations in the Labour Party have been “weaponised” or are a “political football” diminishes the seriousness of the problem instead of elevating it to an issue that should concern everyone. Instead of fulsomely acknowledging that her party is infested with Jew-hatred and has failed to deal with it over the course of years, she has sought to cast this as a partisan matter.
In recent months, eleven MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.
Over 55,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”
