U.K. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn Faces Pressure on Anti-Semitism Accusations Party leaders to meet this week to consider revising code of conduct on anti-Jewish speech and acts By Jason Douglas
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-labour-leader-jeremy-corbyn-faces-pressure-on-anti-semitism-accusations-1535904000?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=undefined&cx_artPos=2#cxrecs_s
LONDON—Tony Flacks joined the British Labour Party in the early 1980s, seeing the center-left group as the natural political home for a high-school teacher working in a rundown North London district blighted by racism and discrimination.
He quit after more than three decades of membership in 2016, angry and fed up at what he perceived as the party’s reluctance to root out an ancient prejudice that he, a British Jew, saw flowering anew within its ranks: anti-Semitism. This year, for the same reason, his 29-year-old daughter followed suit.
Century-old ties between Britain’s Jewish community and the Labour Party are fraying as the U.K.’s main opposition party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, struggle to deal with a crescendo of accusations of anti-Jewish bias.
Some lawmakers fear the controversy is denting Labour’s electoral appeal by overshadowing its attacks on Prime Minister Theresa May’s government over Brexit, housing and other policies voters say they care about.
Officials of the Labour Party, whose governing committee is meeting next week in an attempt to quell the issue, say the party deplores all forms of discrimination. They have pledged tougher penalties for any Labour members engaging in anti-Semitic speech or acts, and Mr. Corbyn has ordered up a program to educate members about anti-Semitism. The Labour leader, who has faced—and denied—several specific allegations of anti-Jewish bias himself, has told British Jews he is their ally in combating hate.Yet the party’s efforts to persuade its supporters and critics that it is tackling the problem have repeatedly fallen flat, and some supporters of the Labour leader have pushed back against the issue. Earlier this year, pollster YouGov PLC found that over 70% of the more than 1,000 Labour members it polled thought accusations of anti-Semitism were being exaggerated in a bid to undermine Mr. Corbyn’s leadership or muffle criticism of Israel.
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