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'Antisemitism denier' Stephen Marks gets top Labour role in dealing with allegations of Jew-hate
He once said people making allegations should be suspended
November 27, 2018 13:13
He once said people making allegations should be suspended
November 27, 2018 13:13A man who said Labour members alleging antisemitism within the party should be suspended, has been elected to Labour’s top disciplinary body dealing, with cases that included alleged antisemitism.
Stephen Marks, a member of the fringe, pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour group, was one of six candidates on a left-wing slate, agreed by Momentum and Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), to have won places on Labour’s national constitutional committee (NCC).
The NCC deals with disciplinary cases involving Labour members, including ones relating to allegations of Jew-hate.
After his election, the Board of Deputies called Mr Marks an "antisemitism denier".
Momentum had confirmed it would support Mr Marks as a candidate – despite earlier claims that its founder Jon Lansman would block the endorsement of the JVL activist.
Mr Marks shared a petition in support of David Watson, who was suspended from the party in 2016, after the JC reported he allegedly shared claims on Facebook that Isis had used weapons made in Israel, comparing Mossad with the Nazis and accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.
As reported by the Red Roar blog, Mr Marks shared the petition, saying: “It is cases like this which ‘bring the party into disrepute’. Those responsible are the ones who should be suspended!”
According to minutes of a meeting of Momentum's Oxford branch, Mr Marks, who once accused the Board of Deputies of being behind “imagined” claims of antisemitism in Labour, wrote a letter in support of suspended Labour activist Jackie Walker.
Ms Walker was first suspended from Labour in early 2016 after saying that “many prominent Jews were chief financiers of the slave trade”.
Her suspension was lifted only for her to be suspended again later that year after she said she had not found a definition of antisemitism she could work with and that Holocaust Memorial Day was not wide-ranging in including other genocides.
Miriam Mirwitch, chair of Young Labour and a member of the Jewish Labour Movement, said electing Mr Marks was not the way to "win back the trust of the Jewish community."
A supporter of Labour Against the Witchhunt who compared Jewish community calls for stronger processes tackling antisemitism to 'the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia in 1914... designed to provide a pretext for... [WW1]' will now be judging disciplinary cases on the NCC.
— Miriam Mirwitch (@mrwtch) November 27, 2018
Board of Deputies Vice President Amanda Bowman said the election of Mr Marks "seems to be part of a concerted effort to make Labour’s disciplinary process less and less credible and more and more open to claims of partiality and corruption."
She said: "At a time when there should be attempts to restore confidence, we are increasingly forced to conclude that we should have no confidence in Labour’s disciplinary process, and that we will have to increasingly look outside the party for justice on antisemitism.”
