Labour MP says she makes 'no apologies' for challenging antisemitism denial at Westminster event

A Labour MP has said she made “no apologies” for challenging a speaker who seemed to suggest that allegations of antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s party were “false” at a Westminster event.

Siobhain McDonagh attended the Labour Irish Society St Patrick's Day celebration event with her staff on Monday when a speaker claimed the fight against the Conservative Government was being damaged by false allegations of Jew-hate within Labour.

Ms McDonagh told the JC she did not plan to make her objection public knowledge until she was sent a tweet calling her behaviour towards “the GMB union speaker inappropriate” and saying: “This sort of intimidating behaviour has to be rooted out of our party.”

In response, Ms McDonagh wrote she made "no apologies for standing up to those who try to deny" Labour antisemitism.

"If I see it I will call it out," she said, asking whether the party had "learnt nothing" from the departure of MP Luciana Berger, who quit Labour last month over the leadership's failure to address Jew-hate.

She asked: “Surely there is no one left on the planet who doesn’t think we have a problem?”

The MP, who has criticised Mr Corbyn’s failure to eradicate the issue, later told the JC: "There were a number of speakers, it was a very packed room.

“A woman got up to speak and she said we had to 'unite to fight the Tories and not make allegations which may be false amongst one another'.

“I took that to mean, in the climate, issues of antisemitism. A number of my friends who I was with thought the same thing. We all just said ‘What?’

“It’s easier not to say anything - but we are past the point where we can just be embarrassed.”

Ms McDonagh said most of those at the “very nice event” did not support the speaker’s remarks. She also stressed her own strong relationship with the GMB union.

“From my perspective – I just wanted to register what I thought I’d heard. I did not want to have a full blown row,” she said.

She added that one of her friends at the event agreed “it is our job to fight racism wherever we find it.”

Last week, she was asked by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether she thought the party was dealing with the problem "seriously".

Ms McDonagh said: “I’m not sure that some people in the Labour Party can.

“Because it’s very much part of their politics, of hard left politics, to be against capitalists and to see Jewish people as the financiers of capital. Ergo you are anti-Jewish people.”

She added there was a "certain strand" of antisemitism among people who were “not Labour, have never been Labour, but we now find them in our party”.