Jew-baiting Williamson proves Labour is institutionally antisemitic

The camera focuses in on a man in a black shirt, standing in front of a baying crowd. “We have backed off too much, we have given too much ground, we have been too apologetic (about antisemitism)” he rages, to loud applause.

This is not vintage footage of some far-right meeting, but a clip of a Labour MP, Chris Williamson, in 2019.

Williamson’s caught-on-camera tirade finally got him suspended by the Labour whips, after years of Jew-baiting. He recently signed a petition supporting known antisemite Gilad Atzmon and defended Pete Willsman when he was thrown off the Momentum election slate for ranting about Jews in a meeting. As far back as 2003, Williamson wrote: “We must begin to take the accusation that Zionists,” that famous code word for Jews, “are trying to control the world very seriously.” He also tried to host a film by Jackie Walker, herself suspended by Labour over antisemitism, in the House of Commons this week.

But it is not really about Chris Williamson. He is just one example of a problem that has infected Labour since Jeremy Corbyn and his far-left acolytes seized power of the party. The Willsman and Walker cases demonstrated this, but there are plenty of others. Labour under Corbyn sees antisemitism as a political problem to solve, not a moral one.

Even the large number of Labour supporters who are genuinely appalled by what is going on in their party all-too-often frame it as issue that will stop them getting elected. They do not seem to fully grasp that it is morally repugnant to allow such behaviour to develop in an organisation, particularly one that seeks to govern the country.

Labour, especially the far-left that now runs it, sees itself as morally superior. They are the good guys, in their minds, and cannot process the idea that they have allowed racism and hatred to spread in their ranks. But it has.

No wonder a clearly heartbroken Ian Austin MP, who quit Labour last week after decades of service, told the BBC’s Newsnight programme, “ I did not think I could look my dad in the eye if I’d stayed in the Labour Party”. His father had escaped the Holocaust, and was put on a train by his mother and sisters, never to see them again.

It is, thankfully, hard to imagine Labour taking a similar approach to racism directed at any other minority group. Anyone who made racist comments against a black person, or a Muslim, say, would surely be marched out of the Labour party, never to return. And quite right too.

But that’s not what happens when it is Jewish people who are the victims. It is clear that the far-left see Jews as white and privileged, and therefore unable to be the victims of discrimination. In her latest work, Professor Deborah Lipstadt, a world leading expert on antisemitism and Holocaust denial who famously defeated David Irving in court, gives this phenomenon a name –  “Corbyn Syndrome”. It is the belief by some that “Jews—for the most part white, privileged members of the elite—cannot possibly be considered victims. If anything, they are victimizers,” she writes.

This Corbyn Syndrome means that Labour does little more than pay lip service to dealing with antisemitism. At all levels, the party it does not seem to properly understand that Jews are a tiny minority in the UK who still need guards outside our schools and places of worship. They do not understand that Jews in the UK walk down the street everyday making sure any signs of religion are covered up – hiding a star of David necklace under a shirt, wearing a baseball cap instead of a kippah (skull cap).

Again, Lipstadt articulates this phenomenon very powerfully. She notes that “in recent years many local Jews have encouraged their coreligionists not to wear kippot in Berlin and other major German cities.” She also recalls that while looking for a Kosher restaurant in Italy, she noticed a group of men in baseball caps. On a whim, she decided to follow them. The men led her to the restaurant she wanted. Nervous about wearing kippot in public, this group of Jewish men had instead covered their heads with what they hoped were innocuous looking baseball caps.

Decisions like this are an everyday reality for many Jews in the UK too. And Labour does not understand that it is part of the problem.

The Labour leadership’s weakness on antisemitism was typified by the response to Williamson’s latest comments being revealed. An ally and public supporter of Corbyn, it seemed initially that he was going to nothing worse than a talking to from the whips. Now, for the time being at least, he has been suspended. It is hard to imagine that such a suspension is going to last very long, nor that he will be permanently booted out of Labour. That, of course, is what should happen. It is what would happen if Labour was serious about tackling antisemitism.

I won’t hold my breath.