Neil Coyle has defended himself against charges of antisemitism, after Jewish Labour members said their complaints about the MP are being stonewalled by the party.
The MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark tweeted in July 2021 that all 350 members of Jewish Voice for Labour should be expelled from the Labour Party en masse because, he alleged, they are “outright Communists.”
“Shockingly, the Labour Party has taken no action at all regarding Mr Coyle’s tweet,“ said Harold Immanuel, a solicitor and life-long Labour donor.
Mr Coyle dismissed these claims as “frankly bizarre.”
“There is no substantial allegation to investigate,” he said. “They are not Southwark residents, they are not my constituents, they are not friends of the Labour Party.”
“I have not broken any rules.”
He cited his “proven track record” of combating antisemitism and racism as an MP.
Mr Immanuel first complained to Labour about the tweet in September 2021, along with Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC and Professor Avi Shlaim.
But the trio said that four months later nothing has come of their complaints despite the Labour Party’s obligations to complainants.
“We heard nothing despite the fact that the acknowledgement said that victims would be kept informed and the policy at the time was that urgent matters would be dealt with, well, urgently,” said Mr Immaneual.
Calling Jews communist is a “notorious antisemitic slur” says Mr Immaneual.
“It forms part of the ultimate antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews are both manipulative bankers and Communists at the same time and are the two ways by which Jews seek the single objective of world domination.
“It’s simply not credible that Mr Coyle didn’t know that calling for the mass expulsion of Jews by alleging that a whole group of them are Communists is antisemitic,” he added.
Mr Coyle contests this.
“I was not saying all Jews were communist. If they are too thick to understand the tweet, they should not be on Twitter.”
Mr Immanuel claimed that the Labour’s failure to address their complaints was symptomatic of a deeper problem.
“If antisemitism was the Labour Party’s real concern, Mr Coyle would have been disciplined months ago,” he says.
In response to these allegations, a Labour spokesperson said:
“The Labour Party takes all complaints seriously and they are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate action is taken.”
An Equalities and Human Rights Commission report published last August showed that actioned antisemitism complaints involved a maximum of 0.29% of Labour Party members.