Former Commons Speaker Lord Martin demands Labour conference on anti-Semitism
2 min read
Former Commons Speaker Lord Martin has weighed into the row over Labour’s handling of anti-Semitism, demanding that the party holds a one-day conference to tackle the issue.
In an interview with the Guardian, the former Labour MP said he was “appalled” at how the party was dealing with the problem and warned it could cost them the next election.
The intervention comes as the Times revealed that 17,000 members have deserted Labour over the last three months.
According to the newspaper, the party has lost about 3% of its paying supporters since January, with hundreds leaving over the past week and 3,000 allowing their membership to lapse.
It comes as Jeremy Corbyn was forced to delete his Facebook account amid concerns over links to anti-Semitic groups and after it emerged that he had defended an offensive mural in a 2012 post.
The revelations led to a protest by leading Jewish groups in Parliament Square, which Mr Corbyn did not attend.
Lord Martin, who served as Speaker from 2000 - 2009, said he would have attended the demonstration but was unable to because of ill health.
He said: “You recall the saying, ‘evil happens when good men do nothing’. I have not been attending parliament because I’m on sick leave, but if I had been there on Monday last week, I would have joined the protest.”
“I don’t want anyone ever coming back to me and saying, ‘Michael, you said nothing about antisemitism.’”
He also dismissed claims by some Labour supporters that the row was being orchestrated to damage Mr Corbyn.
“If you ran a restaurant, and it was dirty and there were cockroaches, you wouldn’t get away with saying ‘the restaurant down the road is dirty and has cockroaches too’.
“You would be expected to sort out the problem,” he said.
“I think the time has come when we’ve got to get a one-day conference – that conference can be done in a regional basis, or in a national basis – but we need the membership to come together and say: ‘In no circumstances are we anti-Semitic. We are a democratic party and we thrive on decency.”
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