A number of those taking part attempted to introduce amendments to the motion, with Ms Lennox arguing in support of a proposal to change the wording from “the legitimate representative” to “a legitimate representative”, saying that “this idea that there is one uniform view I find really, really upsetting.”
Speaking minutes after another Jewish Labour member had described, in detail, their own experiences of significant antisemitism within the Labour party, Ms Lennox said that in her own experience in more than two decades as a Labour member, “the only antisemitism I’ve seen in the Labour party has been in the last few years and has been Jews attacking other Jews for having the wrong attitude on Israel.”
She said the amendment would be “helpful”, describing herself as feeling “very uncomfortable” at “appalling” examples, “what I’ve seen with my own eyes” of people thinking that “one person constitutes a better Jew than another.”
Ms Lennox admitted that she was “aware of stuff online I haven’t seen”, but then said she had seen some things online “by people who claim to be Labour members – I can’t say one way or another – they are always challenged.”
Ms Lennox is on the executive of the Labour Representation Committee, a far-left group within the party of which John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, is the honorary chair. Last June, the Labour List website revealed that Mr McDonnell was supporting Ms Lennox in her attempt to be selected as Parliamentary candidate for the seat of Chingford and Wood Green. She was not ultimately selected as the Labour candidate for the seat.
In December, the LRC released a 39 point statement ahead of its annual conference, included the suggestion that allegations of Jew-hate were "propaganda" from the "ruling class" designed to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.
It also described what it termed “false accusations… intended to weaponise the accusations of antisemitism against Labour. Such allegations must be challenged politically”, and went on to support “criticism of Israel, up to and including the argument by many that, as a colonial settler state, it is an intrinsically racist endeavour.”
The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes among its examples the description of Israel as a racist endeavour.
Last month, ahead of the LRC conference, the JLM urged Mr McDonnell to use his speech at the event to tell the organisation "that by referring to antisemitism as smears, they are the problem".
JLM urged him to resign as president of the group, saying: "LRC are feeding the problem and unless they change their position of condoning and nurturing this racism in our party then you cannot and should not have anything further to do with them and they also should have no place in the Labour Party."
Mr McDonnell did not respond to either suggestion.
A member of Jewish Voice for Labour, Roland Rance, also spoke at the Walthamstow Labour meeting, urging people to reject the motion altogether. He said the JLM was “not an organisation of Jews in the Labour party, it is an organisation of Israel supporters attempting to influence the Labour party.”
Although he did not deny that there were cases of antisemitism in the Labour party, “as in society”, he described the idea that the Labour party is institutionally antisemitic and that Jeremy Corbyn has unleashed a wave of antisemitism as “false, it’s an attack by the right to undermine the best Left leader that the Labour party has ever had.”
The meeting of the Walthamstow Labour party voted by 31 to five in favour of adopting the motion, with four extensions. The amendment to the motion had previously been defeated by 19 votes to ten.
