Diane Abbott should be permanently expelled from Labour after her inflammatory letter to the Observer, the writer at the heart of the row has told the JC.
Earlier this month, Tomiwa Owolade wrote an article in the Sunday paper about a report on inequality in Britain, which showed that Jews and Travellers face more racism than black people.
Responding in her now notorious letter to the editor, Abbott wrote that Jewish, Irish and traveller communities did not experience racism but only “prejudice”, claims that Sir Keir Starmer branded “antisemitic”.
Owolade told the JC: “In light of the facts that she has not issued an adequate apology and seems unlikely to do so, and that she was a big supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, I don’t think she should be allowed to run again as a Labour candidate.
“If she were to apologise properly and explain why she wrote the letter in the first place, I might be open to the idea of readmitting her personally. But I think that would be very difficult for her, and politically impossible for Sir Keir Starmer, who has rightly insisted on a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.”
His call came as two anonymous Labour frontbenchers said that Abbott should consider resigning from the party, the Guardian reported.
Hours after Abbott’s letter was published last Sunday, she issued a statement disassociating herself from the views it contained, claiming it had been a “first draft” sent inadvertently.
However, as the JC revealed yesterday, she sent the letter from her own email address seven days before it was published, shortly after Owolade’s article first went online, and when she was asked later the same day to re-send it with the inclusion of a postal address that had been missing first time, she did so without amending it.
Owolade said that Abbott’s remarks exemplified a “perilous trend” that suggested Jews could not be considered to be victims of racism because they had white skin and enjoyed a relatively advantageous position in society.
He said: “A blind spot exists about Jews and antisemitism because of this new definition of racism that says that people who are perceived to be white cannot be affected by it, meaning Jews are excluded. This is nonsense and very dangerous, and it echoes the classic antisemitic trope that says Jews exercise disproportionate power.”
As well as this modern version of ancient ideas about hidden Jewish conspiracies, Owolade said, there was now a “congruence” with strains of antisemitism traditions that emerged many decades ago on the political left, going back to Karl Marx’s antisemitic bookOn the Jewish Question and the persecution of Jews in the Stalin era Soviet Union.
“Antisemitism on the left has a long lineage,” he told the JC. “And now, whenever the subject is raised, Israel is brought up.”
Owolade said that being at the eye of a political storm had been a “very strange experience. But I’m glad it’s brought the issue of left-wing antisemitism into the open. Previously, some would have said that to claim people on the left believe Jews can’t be victims of racism was a bogus, straw man argument.
“And the fact that her letter has brought universal condemnation is a positive, as is the response by the Labour Party.
“The important thing is to call out all forms of racism, both antisemitism and racism directed against black people. That’s what I was trying to say in my original article, and Diane Abbott has reinforced my argument with her response.”
