The findings of a new report on antisemitic crimes should shock us into action

Antisemitism is a stain on our society across the United Kingdom and as we have seen too often also across parts of Europe. The fact that this has been identified in the research by the Community Security Trust, a British charity established to protect the Jewish community, does not “normalise” racism or give anyone the right to behave in a racist manner; in fact, we should call antisemitism what it is – “racism against Jews” – and it has to stop.

The Labour Party has had quite a year in terms of battling this issue. Let’s have a brief re-cap.

Last March saw an unprecedented demonstration organised by the Jewish community in Parliament Square, which resulted in a meeting with Jeremy Corbyn. In May, the Jewish Labour Movement (the only affiliate in the Labour Party, which, in my opinion, reflects the views of Jewish members) met the party’s new General Secretary, Jennie Formby.

Then, last summer, there was an attempt to re-write the definition of antisemitism as laid out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This, quite rightly, went down very badly with the Jewish community and indeed the wider public. After two months of dreadful headlines came the eventual adoption of the IHRA definition and all 11 examples of antisemitism.

At this point, we all might have felt that the words “zero tolerance” would now see the necessary action both in wider society and especially inside the Labour Party.

Sadly, today we now know that this is not the case – in either groups. The suggestion by the General Secretary that 100 per cent of outstanding cases of antisemitism had been dealt with is, in my view, clearly not correct and, as a consequence, the apparent misleading of the Parliamentary Labour Party this week was very disappointing. The answers sought by MPs were very reasonable and deserved serious answers from the leadership, not a full-blown public argument.

Racism against Jews is a hate crime and those who think this is somehow acceptable need to be dealt with by the law. A knock on their door by the local police would surely focus minds. Hate crimes are on the rise and there can never be mitigating circumstances for this kind of behaviour. It is time for action by government to introduce a new, stronger law against all hate crimes and to stop demonstrations on our streets by known racists. Hate is hate and must be dealt with – over to you Home Secretary.

Social media has a great part to play in modern-day life but it also allows nasty, anonymous hate crimes to take place. Much of this is often aimed at elected representatives and especially at women MPs. This is completely unacceptable and one question that I often get asked is why the social media companies don’t take more direct action to close down this vile behaviour on their platform. It is a good question and one that needs answering. This might be the time to shine for Nick Clegg over at Facebook.

It saddens me and many others that the poison of antisemitism has beset our party for the last three years and, in particular, we are saddened by the lack of acceptable action. Labour’s long-held values are equality and tolerance and I never believed that my party would be in this position.

Let’s be clear: one antisemite in our party is one too many.

The time for hiding the facts is over, so let’s make the decision to remove all those from our party membership who have been accused of racism. If we and the leader are to be “militant allies” (his words) in the fight against racism against Jews then decisive action is needed now to restore Labour’s reputation of fairness and equality.

Zero tolerance must mean zero tolerance – over to you, Jeremy.

Ivor Caplin is the former Labour defence minister and National Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement