Antisemitism in the British Labour Party

Based on Wikipedia: Antisemitism in the British Labour Party

In the summer of 2015, something remarkable happened in British politics. Jeremy Corbyn, a backbench Member of Parliament who had spent three decades championing causes from the fringes—Palestinian rights, anti-war activism, trade union solidarity—found himself catapulted into the leadership of the Labour Party. It was a political earthquake. And almost immediately, a different kind of tremor began: allegations of antisemitism within Labour would dominate British political discourse for the next five years, splitting the left, ending careers, and raising profound questions about where legitimate criticism of Israel ends and prejudice begins.

This is a story about political tribalism, definitional warfare, and the difficulty of separating bad-faith attacks from genuine concerns. It's also a story that stretches back much further than Corbyn—all the way to the late Victorian era, when the British labour movement was first finding its feet.

The Boer War and the Original Sin

Antisemitism was depressingly common throughout British society in the late nineteenth century. But something particular happened during the Second Boer War, which raged from 1899 to 1902 in South Africa. The conflict—Britain's attempt to crush two independent Boer republics and gain control of the region's gold and diamond wealth—became a catalyst for a specific kind of prejudice within the emerging left.

Many in the labour movement opposed the war on anti-imperialist grounds. Reasonable enough. But some of them reached for an explanation that would prove remarkably durable: Jewish capitalists were behind it all.

Henry Hyndman, a leading figure in the Social Democratic Federation (one of Britain's earliest socialist organisations), blamed "Jewish capitalists" for starting the war. This angered other members of his own organisation. The Liberal journalist J. A. Hobson—whose work on imperialism would later influence Lenin—wrote that South Africa's gold mines were "almost entirely in their hands," meaning Jews. Even Keir Hardie, the Scottish miner who founded the Labour Party itself, claimed that Jewish financial houses formed part of a secretive imperialist cabal promoting war.

The pattern was set early: when seeking explanations for imperial violence and economic exploitation, some on the left would reach for theories about shadowy Jewish financiers pulling strings behind the scenes.

A Long Quiet Period

For most of the twentieth century, antisemitism wasn't a prominent feature of Labour Party politics. The party had Jewish members and leaders. It supported the creation of Israel in 1948. The British left's relationship with Zionism was, for decades, broadly positive—many early Labour figures saw the kibbutz movement as a model of socialist organisation.

What changed? According to historian Paul Kelemen, the shift began in the 1980s. Israel's politics were moving rightward. The 1982 invasion of Lebanon shocked many on the European left. Most significantly, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip—territories Israel had captured in the 1967 Six-Day War—became increasingly entrenched and increasingly brutal.

Parts of the political left adopted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel positions. This was, in itself, a political stance that millions of people around the world hold without a trace of antisemitism. But the shift created new terrain for old prejudices to operate in. The line between criticising Israeli government policy and deploying antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and conspiracy could become blurred—sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately.

Kelemen found no evidence that antisemitism drove the left's changing perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during this period. But researcher Daniel Staetsky noted that accusations of antisemitism within Labour began appearing in the 1980s nonetheless.

Tentacles and Cabals

The 2000s brought several incidents that illustrated the problem with uncomfortable clarity.

In 2003, Labour Member of Parliament Tam Dalyell made claims about the Israel lobby in the United States that went well beyond policy criticism. "There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States," he said. He described "a cabal of Jewish advisers" directing American and British policy on Iraq, naming six of seven advisers to President George W. Bush as Jewish and close to the Israeli right-wing Likud party. He also singled out Michael Levy, Tony Blair's chief fundraiser and Middle East envoy.

Eric Moonman, a former Labour MP, said he didn't think Dalyell was personally antisemitic—but that his language "could be taken as supportive of such views." This became a recurring theme: the question of whether someone's words revealed genuine prejudice or simply carelessness with explosive imagery.

In 2010, Labour MP Martin Linton alleged that a malevolent Israel lobby operated in the UK. "There are long tentacles of Israel in this country," he said, "who are funding election campaigns and putting money into the British political system for their own ends." Around the same time, Gerald Kaufman—himself Jewish and a longtime Labour MP—said that right-wing Jewish millionaires had large stakes in the Conservative Party.

Mark Gardner, a spokesman for the Community Security Trust (a charity protecting British Jews), responded: "Anybody who understands antisemitism will recognise just how ugly and objectionable these quotes are, with their imagery of Jewish control and money power."

That phrase—"Jewish control and money power"—gets at something important. The specific tropes matter. Criticising the Israeli government's settlement policy is one thing. Invoking images of tentacles, cabals, shadowy financial manipulation, and disproportionate influence echoes centuries of antisemitic propaganda. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that notorious forgery from Tsarist Russia, depicted exactly such a conspiracy. When politicians on the left reached for this imagery—even when criticising policies that deserved criticism—they were drawing from a poisoned well.

The Corbyn Era Begins

Jeremy Corbyn had spent thirty-two years as a backbench MP, championing causes that the Labour leadership preferred to ignore: Palestinian solidarity, opposition to Western military interventions, support for Irish republicanism. He was a patron of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and had campaigned extensively for Palestinian rights.

When he emerged as a front-runner in Labour's 2015 leadership election—propelled by a wave of grassroots enthusiasm that party insiders had completely failed to anticipate—the Jewish Chronicle devoted its front page to seven questions about his associations. These included his relationship with Hezbollah and Hamas (Islamist militant organisations he had called "friends," though he said he disagreed with their views); his attendance at London Quds Day rallies where allegedly antisemitic banners appeared; and his connection to "Deir Yassin Remembered," an organisation commemorating a 1948 massacre of Palestinian villagers that was founded by Holocaust denier Paul Eisen.

Corbyn said he had attended "two or three" of the group's annual events, alongside Jewish Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, before Eisen's Holocaust denial views became publicly known. He said he would not have associated with Eisen had he known. Critics pointed out that Eisen's views were known by 2005 and that he had written an essay in 2008 titled "My life as a Holocaust denier."

This set the pattern for the years ahead: incidents from Corbyn's long career on the political margins would surface, be defended by his supporters as guilt by association or taken out of context, and be condemned by critics as evidence of deeper problems. Both interpretations contained elements of truth. And both sides would become increasingly entrenched.

The Dam Breaks: 2016

In April 2016, it was revealed that Labour MP Naz Shah had, before becoming an MP and during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, shared a graphic depicting Israel superimposed on the United States with the caption "Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict – relocate Israel into United States." She added the comment "Problem solved."

Shah was suspended pending investigation. She apologised for bringing the party into disrepute and was eventually reinstated.

The graphic had been created by Norman Finkelstein, an American political scientist and fierce critic of Israel whose parents were Holocaust survivors. Finkelstein called the controversy "obscene" and accused those on the Labour right of "dragging the Nazi holocaust through the mud for the sake of their petty jostling for power and position."

This raised another recurring question: when Jewish voices themselves disagreed about what constituted antisemitism, whose interpretation should prevail?

Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, stepped into the controversy to defend Shah—and made everything immeasurably worse. He said he had never heard antisemitic comments from Labour members. Then he added: "When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."

The statement was historically garbled (Hitler didn't win an election in 1932, though the Nazi Party became the largest in the Reichstag; the Nazi regime's early policies included the Haavara Agreement facilitating Jewish emigration to Palestine, but calling this "supporting Zionism" badly mischaracterises the regime's antisemitic intent). More importantly, it seemed to many Jews like a grotesque trivialisation of the Holocaust—using Hitler to make a point in a contemporary political argument about Israel.

Livingstone was suspended for a year. A party hearing found him guilty of prejudicial and detrimental conduct and suspended him from representing the party for another year. He finally resigned in 2018, maintaining he had done nothing wrong. "I abhor antisemitism," he said. "I have fought it all my life and will continue to do so."

By May 2016, Labour had suspended fifty-six members for allegedly antisemitic statements. This represented a tiny fraction of the membership—0.012 percent. But the drip-drip of incidents created a powerful impression of a party with a serious problem.

The Chakrabarti Inquiry

Corbyn commissioned an inquiry into antisemitism and other forms of racism, led by Shami Chakrabarti, a barrister and former head of Liberty, the human rights advocacy group. She announced she was joining the Labour Party to conduct the inquiry—a decision that raised eyebrows about her independence.

In June 2016, the inquiry reported finding "no evidence" of systemic antisemitism in Labour, though it acknowledged an "occasionally toxic atmosphere." It made twenty recommendations, including outlawing offensive terms and improving disciplinary procedures.

The Jewish Labour Movement chair called it "a strong platform for the party to set a gold standard in tackling racism and anti-Semitism." The Board of Deputies of British Jews expressed hope for "rigorous and swift" implementation. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called for "full and unhesitating implementation."

Then came August. Chakrabarti was Labour's sole nomination to the House of Lords in David Cameron's resignation honours list. She became a peer in September and was appointed Shadow Attorney General the following month.

The perception shift was immediate and devastating. The Board of Deputies now called the report "a whitewash for peerage scandal." British novelist Howard Jacobson, who had won the Man Booker Prize for a novel dealing with English antisemitism, called the inquiry "a brief and shoddy shuffling of superficies."

Whether or not the peerage was a reward for a favourable report, the timing destroyed the inquiry's credibility with many observers. The appearance of a quid pro quo was impossible to shake.

The EHRC Investigation

In May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission—the statutory body responsible for enforcing equality law in Britain—launched an investigation into whether Labour had "unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people" because they were Jewish. This was extraordinary. The EHRC had previously only investigated one political party: the far-right British National Party.

The investigation took place during a chaotic period. Corbyn remained leader through the 2019 general election, which Labour lost badly. In April 2020, Keir Starmer became the new leader. Almost immediately, an internal Labour report on antisemitism handling was leaked.

The leaked report told a complicated story. It said Corbyn's team had inherited a lack of processes and systems for handling antisemitism complaints. But it also said that hostility toward Corbyn's team from senior officials aligned with Labour's right wing had contributed to "mistakes, confusion and difficulties handling cases."

In other words: there were genuine problems with how antisemitism was handled, and there was also factional warfare that made everything worse.

The EHRC published its findings in October 2020. It found twenty-three instances of political interference in antisemitism complaints and concluded that Labour had breached the Equality Act in two cases. The party was responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination.

Corbyn's response proved his undoing. He released a statement saying that "the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media." Starmer suspended him from the Labour Party for undermining the EHRC report's findings.

In 2022, the Forde Report—an independent review commissioned after the leaked internal report—was published. It said that antisemitism had been "used as a factional weapon" within Labour and that senior figures hostile to Corbyn had "slowed down the leadership in dealing with antisemitism and other forms of racism."

The Numbers Game

What do we actually know about the prevalence of antisemitic attitudes among Labour supporters versus the general population?

A 2017 YouGov poll commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism found that Labour supporters were actually less likely to hold antisemitic views than Conservative Party or UK Independence Party supporters.

A study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research that same year found that people on the left wing of the political spectrum were no more antisemitic than the general population—and less antisemitic than those on the right wing. The same study noted that left-wing people were more likely to be critical of Israel.

This creates a puzzle. If Labour supporters weren't unusually antisemitic, why did the party develop such a severe reputation for antisemitism during the Corbyn years?

Several factors likely contributed. First, there were genuine incidents—real antisemitic statements by real party members—that deserved condemnation. Second, the party's disciplinary processes for handling complaints were inadequate and inconsistently applied. Third, factional warfare within Labour meant that some on the right used antisemitism allegations as a weapon against Corbyn, while some on the left dismissed legitimate concerns as bad-faith attacks. Fourth, intense media scrutiny amplified every incident in ways that weren't applied to other parties.

All of these things could be simultaneously true.

The Definition Wars

Underlying much of the controversy was a fundamental disagreement about what antisemitism actually means—specifically, where criticism of Israel crosses the line into prejudice.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA, developed a working definition of antisemitism that has been widely adopted. It includes examples related to Israel, such as "claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor" or "applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation."

Critics of the IHRA definition argue that these examples could be used to suppress legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies, particularly regarding the occupation of Palestinian territories. Supporters argue that the examples correctly identify ways in which antisemitic attitudes can be expressed through the language of anti-Zionism.

In July 2018, Labour's governing body adopted the IHRA definition for disciplinary purposes—but with modifications to the Israel-related examples. This provoked fierce criticism from Jewish community organisations, who saw the modifications as Labour carving out space for antisemitism to continue. Eventually, Labour adopted the full definition without modifications.

The debate continues. Is calling Israel an "apartheid state"—language used by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous Israeli human rights organisations—antisemitic? Is advocating for a single democratic state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, rather than a two-state solution, antisemitic? Is comparing Israeli policies to historical injustices, including those committed by Nazi Germany, antisemitic?

Reasonable people disagree. But the heat of the argument made nuanced discussion nearly impossible.

What Actually Happened

Looking back, it seems clear that several things happened simultaneously during the Corbyn era.

First, Labour did have a problem with antisemitism. Not a uniquely severe problem compared to society at large, but a real one. Some members held antisemitic views. Some expressed those views using classic antisemitic tropes about Jewish money, Jewish power, and Jewish conspiracy—often while believing themselves to be criticising Israel rather than Jews. The party's systems for handling complaints were inadequate.

Second, the problem was weaponised. Internal Labour opponents of Corbyn used antisemitism allegations to damage his leadership, sometimes conflating legitimate criticism of his associations and statements with bad-faith attacks designed to undermine the left of the party. Media coverage was intense and often disproportionate compared to equivalent issues in other parties.

Third, both of the above made things worse. Corbyn's supporters, seeing bad-faith attacks, became defensive and dismissive of legitimate concerns. This defensiveness created space for actual antisemitism to be minimised or excused. Jewish Labour members and supporters found themselves caught in the middle—their concerns used as ammunition in a factional war they didn't choose.

Fourth, the debate revealed genuine disagreements about Israel, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism that have not been resolved and cannot be resolved simply through better disciplinary procedures. These are questions about history, identity, nationalism, colonialism, and human rights that cut to the heart of how different people understand the world.

The Longer History

The Corbyn-era controversies are best understood not as an aberration but as the latest chapter in a longer story. The British left has never been immune to antisemitism. From Keir Hardie's comments about Jewish financiers during the Boer War, through various incidents in subsequent decades, to the present day, some on the left have reached for antisemitic explanations when seeking to understand capitalism, imperialism, and inequality.

This isn't a left-wing problem specifically. Antisemitism exists across the political spectrum—and polling consistently shows it's actually more prevalent on the right. But when it appears on the left, it often takes a particular form: conspiracy theories about financial manipulation, claims about disproportionate Jewish influence, imagery of puppeteers and string-pullers. These tropes echo historic antisemitism while presenting themselves as anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist critique.

The challenge is distinguishing between criticism of Israel that may be harsh but is politically legitimate, and criticism that draws on antisemitic tropes even when the speaker may not consciously intend prejudice. This requires careful attention to language, imagery, and context—exactly the kind of nuanced judgment that becomes impossible in the heat of factional warfare.

Where Things Stand

Under Keir Starmer's leadership, Labour has taken a harder line on antisemitism. Corbyn remains suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party, though he is still technically a Labour Party member. Many on the left feel that legitimate criticism of Israel is being suppressed. Many in the Jewish community feel that years of minimisation and defensiveness have permanently damaged trust.

The underlying questions remain unresolved. What is the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism? When does criticism of Israel cross into prejudice? How should political parties handle complaints about racism when the very definition of that racism is contested?

These aren't questions with easy answers. But the Corbyn era demonstrated the costs of getting them wrong—or of refusing to engage with them honestly. A major political party was found to have breached equality law. A generation of Jewish Labour members felt alienated from their political home. A left-wing movement that saw itself as anti-racist struggled to acknowledge racism within its own ranks.

The story continues. Britain's relationship with its Jewish community, the left's relationship with Israel and Palestine, and the Labour Party's relationship with its own recent history all remain works in progress. Understanding what happened—in all its complexity—is the necessary first step toward doing better.