The Labour Party has a long and proud history of solidarity with the British Jewish community, as this booklet to mark this important moment in JLM’s affiliation to the Labour Party shows.
The Jewish Labour Movement helped found the Labour Party, and as one of our oldest socialist societies has always been at the heart of our movement. From its proud roots as Poale Zion to the revived and reinvigorated membership organisation of over 2,000 people, JLM has gone from strength to strength over this past century.
I’ve been a supporter of your work for many years, and it’s actually a little known fact that when I was a young political organiser in the Engineering and Electrical Union, one of my favourite tasks was to print the Poale Zion newsletter under the watchful supervision of Lawrie Nerva.
I know that the last few years have not been a happy time for relations between the Labour Party and the British Jewish community. As a party we have been too slow to respond to the growing incidences of antisemitism in the party and the reforms and processes the party has introduced to attempt to deal with antisemitism simply haven’t worked.
