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Jewish students' anger over Labour’s failure to publish report into Oxford antisemitism
July 5, 2016 13:49
Jewish students have accused Labour of sweeping allegations of antisemitism at Oxford University Labour Club under the carpet.
An investigation into Jew-hate at OULC was launched in February after Alex Chalmers, the co-chairman of the club, resigned, claiming a large proportion of members “have some kind of problem with Jews”.
He alleged that members used the slur "Zio" and had expressed support for the Islamist group Hamas.
The investigation, chaired by Baroness Royall, reported in May, but Labour's National Executive Committee blocked the full publication of the report.
At the time Baroness Royall said that the issues she had considered would be dealt with by Shami Chakrabarti’s wider inquiry into antisemitism in Labour.
It had been expected that the main issues and evidence from the peer's report would be considered and published as part of Ms Chakrabarti's inquiry.
However, no mention was made of the peer’s findings when Ms Chakrabarti unveiled her own report last Thursday.
A Labour spokeswoman said today that the party's NEC had agreed in May "to publish the recommendations only. I'm not aware of any other decisions, or plans to publish anything further".
In a joint statement, the Union of Jewish Students and the Oxford Jewish Society called for Baroness Royall’s full report to be published immediately.
Labour was “unwilling to confront the issue of antisemitism within its own ranks,” they said.
“Many Jewish students at Oxford not only feel frustrated, but also let down by a process that, almost five months later, has failed to properly address the issues that they have raised.
"They were told that evidence from Jan Royall’s inquiry would be included in Shami Chakrabarti’s, but last week’s publication showed nothing of the sort.”
Jewish students deserved answers, they said.
