A Labour activist said to be one of Jeremy Corbyn’s nominees for a peerage was a signatory to a letter defending Labour Party members who had been suspended for comments about Jews, Zionism and the Holocaust.

Martha Osamor, a long-time community activist and Labour member, is the mother of Kate Osamor, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

As reported by the Guido Fawkes political blog, in June 2016, Martha Osamor signed a letter backing a number of suspended Labour members.

These included Ken Livingstone, who had been suspended from the party after saying Hitler “had been supporting Zionism… before he went mad”.

Ms Osamor released a statement this afternoon. She said: “I am and always have been implacably opposed to antisemitism and have spent my life as an anti-racist campaigner.

“As Jeremy has said clearly, raising concerns about antisemitism is not a smear. I welcome Jennie Formby’s recent actions as Labour’s new general secretary to ensure there is no place for antisemitism in the Labour Party.”

The letter said “allegations of antisemitism are being used to stifle the sharing of information on some of the uncomfortable events that took place during the Shoah”.

The letter also supported Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein. Mr Greenstein had been suspended from the Labour Party after a number of cases of verbal abuse, including describing Louise Ellman, the Labour MP and president of the Jewish Labour Movement as a “racist supporter of the child abuse of Palestinian children”. Mr Greenstein was expelled from the party in February.

Ms Walker had been suspended by the party after claiming that “many Jews were chief financiers of the slave trade”. The letter described her suspension as having been “applied and publicised in haste, without due consideration”.

Ms Walker was subsequently readmitted to the party, only to be suspended again a few months later for comments about antisemitism and Holocaust Memorial Day made at a Jewish Labour Movement event during the 2016 Labour Party conference. She remains suspended.

Other suspended activists the letter backed defended included Marlene Ellis and David White. Ms Ellis dismissed a post which Naz Shah MP had shared - and which she herself was suspended for - which called for Jews to be transported from the Middle East to America as “not so outrageous within the historical context and involvement of Zionists with Nazis”.

Mr White described Ken Livingstone’s comments about Hitler and Zionism as “largely accurate”.