People might be forgiven for thinking that the UK Labour Party had plumbed the depths of its tawdry flirtation with anti-Semitism – both outright and implicit. However, a story emanating from Plymouth, in England's far southwestern corner, may have topped the lot.
The Labour Party has suspended Margaret Corvid, who previously made headlines as a whip-cracking dominatrix, for claiming that Zionists "quashed the truth about their collaboration with Nazis," according to The Daily Mail.
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Her comments were made in 2007, following the screening of a Holocaust-related play called Perdition – a controversial piece that claimed Zionists collaborated with Nazis, both before and during World War II.
A former member of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity (SPSC) – a particularly virulent backer of Palestinian statehood – Corvid, who was born Jewish and was formerly known as Esther Sassaman – left the group in protest over its decision to screen the play on International Holocaust Memorial Day.
"The Zionists have certainly controlled the discourse about Holocaust remembrance for many years, and have aggressively quashed the truth about Zionist collaboration with Nazis," she wrote in her resignation letter, according to The Mail.
She added: "Until then, Zionists will be able to marginalize and isolate alternative narratives during Holocaust Memorial Week and will use such efforts to strengthen their control of the Holocaust discourse."
Corvid's letter was unearthed by David Collier, a self–styled anti-Semitism researcher and blogger, who has gained a certain amount of notoriety following – at least in the Twitter-sphere – Jeremy Corbyn's 2015 election as Labour leader.
Sassaman resigned from the Dundee branch of SPSC and left the city in 2015, relocating to England's southwest. After moving she changed her name and joined the Labour Party – being elected a party councillor in 2018.
She claimed that she disclosed all her past political associations – Socialist Workers Party, Scottish National Party and Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign – during a hearing ahead of her selection as a Labour Councillor. However, she had apparently forgotten about the issue regarding Perdition, as well as a subsequent "intemperate" tweet.
Having been made aware of the allegations against her in November 2018, Corvid said that she immediately reported them to the deputy council leader and chief whip in a face-to-face meeting. "These old statements do not reflect my views on the Israel/Palestine conflict or my views on anti-Semitism," she maintained. In addition, she said that she supported the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism as well as the Labour Party's alleged commitment to stamping it out.
This episode at least shows some consistency within Labour about its attitudes to certain aspects of anti-Semitism – particularly the slur regarding Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. In 2016, former London mayor and long-time Labour MP Ken Livingstone effectively started off the anti-Semitism debate that has engulfed the party in recent years, by effectively claiming that "Hitler was a Zionist."
It took the best part of a year to censure Livingstone – and even when the punishment was handed down it consisted of a suspension from holding office for a year, rather than from the party itself. What effectively constituted a slap on the wrist, led to more than 100 MPs calling for his expulsion.
