A Labour MP and Jeremy Corbyn ally has been accused of "undermining" his party, after publicly backing an activist expelled over actions at the party’s publication launch of its antisemitism inquiry.
Chris Williamson, the MP for Derby North, spoke at an event last night in support of Marc Wadsworth, and told the Politics Home website that Mr Wadsworth had been "expelled for asking a question at a press conference", which the MP called “plainly absurd”.
"I gave evidence on his behalf at the original NCC [National Constitutional Committee] hearing a couple of months ago and was shocked by the outcome,” Mr Williamson said of Mr Wadsworth's explusion.
“The decision was inconsistent with the evidence."
The Labour Against Antisemitism group condemned Mr Williamson, tweeting: “Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly been asked to instruct his MPs not to share platforms with expelled members.
“Chris Williamson MP needs to have the whip withdrawn for this provocative action which will only cause further anger & distress.”
Richard Angell, the director of the centre-left Progress group, said that, by supporting Mr Wadsworth, Mr Williamson “continues to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s wishes that antisemitism be taken seriously, in favour of a man who having only been a member of the party for 30 days used an event on tackling antisemitism to use an offensive antisemitic trope against a Jewish MP.”
I was delighted to speak at a packed meeting in Manchester this evening to support @Marcwads in the campaign to clear his name. pic.twitter.com/q1Fcdha98D
— Chris Williamson MP (@DerbyChrisW) May 30, 2018
Mr Wadsworth was suspended from the party in 2016 after haranguing Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth at the publication launch of the Chakrabarti inquiry into antisemitism within the party.
He accused Ms Smeeth of working “hand in hand” with right-wing newspapers like the Daily Telegraph.
Ms Smeeth, visibly shaken, walked out of the event in tears, while Mr Wadsworth was subsequently seen talking and laughing with Jeremy Corbyn, who had said nothing during his outburst.
After almost a two-year suspension, Mr Wadsworth was expelled from the party last month.
The NCC confirmed that he had breached rule 2.1.8 of the Labour Party rulebook, having acted in a way which was "grossly detrimental to the party".
This is not the first time that Mr Williamson has supported a member of the Labour party suspended or expelled for their views.
He has supported Jackie Walker, who was suspended from Labour after writing that “many Jews… were the chief financiers of the slave trade.”
Allowed back into the party a few months later, she was suspended again after making comments at a Jewish Labour Meeting fringe event at the Labour Party conference, when she said she hadn’t found a definition of antisemitism that she could work with and wrongly claimed that Holocaust Memorial Day did not commemorate other genocides.
The issue of Mr Williamson’s support for Ms Walker was brought up at the meeting last month between Jeremy Corbyn and Jewish communal leaders, when Mr Williamson was scheduled to again share a platform with Ms Walker.
As reported by the JC at the time, when asked if he would order Mr Williamson not to go ahead, Mr Corbyn said he had no power to do so. “But you can simply tell him that he mustn’t do it”, he was told.
