The Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council have condemned Labour for selecting a a council candidate who previously dismissed the Enough is Enough protest as “a very powerful interest group mobilising its… immense strength” against Jeremy Corbyn.
Frances Naggs, who is standing to be elected to the Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, wrote a widely publicised Facebook post addressed to the Labour leader the morning after the Enough is Enough protest in March 2018.
The rally, which was organised by the Board of Deputies and the JLC, saw around 1,500 Jews come together with less than 48 hours’ notice to protest in Parliament Square against antisemitism in the party.
“Yesterday we witnessed the full onslaught of a very powerful special interest group mobilising its apparent, apparent immense strength against you”, Ms Naggs wrote.
“It is clear this group can employ the full might of the BBC to make sure its voice is heard very loudly and clearly”, she continued, lamenting that “not every special interest group can get the same coverage.
“We live in a democracy…and no special interest group, regardless of their history or influence, can be allowed to dictate who the rest of us can vote for or how we vote,” she added.
Ms Naggs’ post was liked thousands of times by supporters of Mr Corbyn, with close to 1,000 asking her to add their names to it in an endorsement of its sentiments.
Her post was widely condemned at the time for the use of antisemitic tropes, and Labour subsequently launched an investigation.
Speaking to the Independent this week, Ms Naggs said Labour had dealt with her case “swiftly, as it was understood by all that know me that this was a naive mistake.”
She told the paper she was “upset this had come up again”, adding: “I was completely unaware of even the idea of antisemitic tropes, and the ‘special interest group’ I was thinking of was the anti-Corbyn wing of the Labour Party.”
Amanda Bowman, vice president of the Board of Deputies, described the language Ms Naggs had used as “abhorrent.”
She noted that it had been a year since representatives of the Board and JLC had met with Mr Corbyn to discuss issues of concern around antisemitism, saying that by now “we hoped that Labour might have cleansed itself of antisemitism
“Instead, by selecting candidates like Frances Naggs… they have continued to rub on to themselves a racist stain that won’t easily come off,” she said.
A JLC spokesperson said “the spectre of antisemitism” had dogged the party in recent years.
They added: “For them to put up a candidate who has used such hateful language is immensely disappointing but not surprising.”
