Has the Labour party always had this level of problems with anti-semitism?

Question

The UK Labour party has had a lot of anti-semitism issues in the news recently, including an mural which included caricatures of two Jewish bankers, two separate council candidates posting holocaust denial content, and a former London mayor making repeated revisionist statements about Nazi Germany (though he doesn't deny that the holocaust happened).

Excuses include: For Corbyn, he hadn't seen the mural before opposing its erasure, Christine Shawcroft's is likewise that she didn't see the holocaust denial post before defending the person who made the post, for Alan Bull, he was only sharing it rather than endorsing it, and he's dyslexic, for Ken Livingstone that he was only stating historical facts, none yet for Roy Smart apart from a case of mistaken identity.

I can't recall hearing about things like this a decade or so ago. I don't know if this is because of an increase in incidents, or because such incidents are more likely to attract attention nowadays.

Has the level of scrutiny / opposition research, either by those within the Labour party, people in other political parties, those in the media, or those in social media, increased? Also, is it easier to do opposition research when it involves content on social media?

If attitudes towards anti-semitism have changed, why have they changed? While some, such as @LeaveEUOfficial, have blamed it on Labour wanting to get the Muslim vote, as far as I can tell, none of these politicians are Muslim, and at least some of these politicians don't have much of a Muslim constituency. Allan Bull's attempted ward of Stanground South has only 76 Muslims out of 8000, and Sugar's attempted ward of St James is only 2% Muslim - there's only three times more Muslims than Jedi Knights.

Answer 1

Has the Labour party always had this level of problems with anti-semitism?

No. The current problems are a direct result of the changes brought about by Jeremy Corbyn. This is not, however, to suggest that Mr Corbyn is anti-Jewish.

The reason for this assertion is as follows. From the late 1960's onwards, the Middle East was a central proxy for the Cold War. Israel and Saudi Arabia were seen as representing American/capitalist interests while Egypt, Syria and Palestine were seen as part of the Russian/socialist sphere.

As such, strong anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian sentiment was (and still is) prevalent amongst the ideological left in the UK. Now, although it is true that being anti-Israeli is not the same as being anti-Jewish, it is also true that political groups that have a strong anti-Israeli bent are more likely to attract a minority of anti-Jewish adherents. And this has been the case with the ideological left.

For the last 30-odd years, the ideological left has not held much sway in the Labour party. Although there have remained pockets during that period, candidates with more centrist views were deliberately selected across the organisation. As such, the strongly anti-Israeli groups were not well represented and, therefore, the minority in those groups who were anti-Jewish were negligible to non-existent.

With Mr Corbyn's ascendancy, that has changed. There are a much larger number of candidates from the ideological left, and this has been encouraged by the party leadership. As they are now selecting much more widely from strongly anti-Israeli groups, unless there is very strict vetting, it is inevitable that some with anti-Jewish sentiment will come to the fore. And this has occurred.

Does this mean that the Labour leadership is anti-Jewish? Not at all. It does, however, mean that they are directly responsible for an increase in anti-Jewish sentiment in the Labour Party and, in my opinion, it is incumbent upon them to rectify it.

Answer 2

TL;DR: defining when criticism of Israel becomes anti-Semitism

First things first, please do note that generalizations are that, generalizations. The point that I am going to disagree with the idea that attitudes towards anti-Semitism have changed does not mean that there cannot be cases of genuine anti-Semites in the Labour party (or in any other group of people big enough).

Vox has an interesting article on the issue.

On the basis on that:

1. Anti-Semitism has a - justified - very negative perception, making it useful for appeals to emotion. It is very useful to claim that your opponent is anti-Semite as an ad hominem which has a profound impact. Your opponent says four words, you have to carefully explain what your position is¹.

2. The left is usually against the occupation of Palestine by Israeli forces and asks for an end of the military occupation of Palestine territories, mostly on the basis of a two state solution, based in borders similar to those of 1949, dismantling of colonies, shared Jerusalen, etc.

   • Regardless of its merits, it gives people² a line of attack: "support of the Palestines or criticism of the Israel government is just disguised anti-Semitism"³. Even if the criticism comes from Jewish leftists, because "they do not know what true anti-Semitism is".

   • This also has put the same people in the left sharing arguments with true anti-Semite groups who just oppose anything Israel does. Which leads to guilt by association⁴ in some cases and in other cases to actual, serious mistakes.

   • And of course, when someone realy loses it (e.g. Ken Livingston and his refusal to apologize for his comments) it just becomes the "example" that justifies calling all/most of the Left anti-Semite. The fact that his comments have been answered by suspension from the Labour Party seems not to be taken into consideration.

3. Regarding the UK, the issue seems to have become more relevant since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party. Mr. Corbyn has been more left-leaning than a significant part of his party, and has been openly criticized by a section of it⁵.

   He does have some well deserved polemics:

   • So far the more damning would be a report that he called representatives from Hamas and Hizbulla "friends". He publicly regretted that, but I think it is still a grave mistake.

   • Another one would be the mural that is alluded by the OP, and that he claims he was defending -without having noticed its anti-Semitic content- on the grounds of freedom of speech.

Things that do have changed:

• Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of the Labour Party. And, regardless if you agree with it or not, criticism of him is always going to have a bigger impact that the same criticism if he were just a base member of the Party, or even a MP. It goes with the position.

• Social media. It is not new. But the first line politicians that appear today did use social media before being first line politicians. Even if Gordon Brown or David Cameron did get to use, say, Twitter, they would have used it while being conscient of his public position and would have avoided inflamatory statements. But first line politicians of today probably did use social media before getting their positions. That makes it easier to analyze everything they have posted in search of anything that could be polemic.

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¹ Consider how easy would be to call somebody supporting the Dalai Lama "anti-Sinicist". Yet it does not have the same strength, doesn't it?

² Either because they support Israel government position, or because it is a way of attacking the left, or because the sincerely believe it is anti-Semitism.

³ Recently there was a manifestation in Paris against a recent anti-semitic crime. Of which Jean Luc Melenchon was expelled just because he supports a boycott of Israel due to the occupation of Palestine. Again, generalizations are unfair and there have been criticism of this by Jewish people, including the son of the woman who was murdered.

Do you imagine being prevented from condemning the murder of a Russian citizen because you support economic sanctions against Russian intervention in Ukraine?

UPDATE: Link in English to the news related in the above link. It has been harder to find that I thought, because most English online newspapers seem to have given more attention to the expulsion of Marine Le Pen; explaining Melenchon just for "claims of anti-Semites in his party". As a result, I do not know if the source is reliable, but it seems to be from Israel.

⁴ And in case you want to argue that guilt by association is guilt, let's remember USA's BFF in the Middle East. Or this other friend of dictators

⁵ Of course, criticism of a leader from his own party is always more newsworthy than criticism from other sources. Regardless of the basis or motive of the criticism, it shows that there is internal conflict in the party.

Answer 3

No, it's more or less a newish phenomenon. Consider

Two weeks ago Berger, a member of parliament, shocked the nation when she announced her departure from the country’s official opposition. The great niece of a postwar-era Labour government minister, Berger joined the party at age 15 and was parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement. Standing at a lectern with several other former Labour MPs, she announced the formation of a new caucus called the Independent Group, established for those disaffected with the growing extremism of the country’s two major political parties. Labour, she said, had become “sickeningly, institutionally racist” under the tenure of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Specifically, it was anti-Semitism that drove Berger out.

“Until Jeremy Corbyn became its leader in September 2015, Labour did not have a problem with anti-Jewish racism,” Joan Ryan, who followed Berger in leaving the party, wrote recently. “Today, it is institutionally anti-Semitic” and “poses a danger to the cohesion of our society, the safety of our citizens, and the health of our democracy.” Mike Gapes, another former Labour MP, declared the party of which he had been a member for five decades “Unfit for government. And a Threat to national security.”

85 percent of British Jews consider Corbyn to be an anti-Semite; almost 40 percent say they would “seriously consider” leaving the country were he to be elected prime minister.

Also, consider

The political commentator and avid Corbyn supporter Owen Jones recently dismissed Labour’s racism problem as “a fringe on the left” and charged that “Corbyn and the left are being smeared.” Jones made the comment days after the NEC’s rejection of the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism, which is adopted by 31 countries, including the U.K. The only other major European party not to accept the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism is Viktor Orban’s populist Fidesz party in Hungary.