UK Labor party suspends Diane Abbott for saying Jews face prejudice, not racism

[ad_1]

LONDON, April 23 (Reuters) – Britain’s main opposition Labor Party has suspended top MP Diane Abbott over a letter she wrote in which she said prejudice suffered by Jewish people were similar, but not identical, to racism.

Labour, who polls are likely to form Britain’s next government after an election due next year, has been accused of discrimination and harassment against Jews under its former leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The equality watchdog found in 2020 Labor had serious shortcomings in the parties’ handling of persistent complaints of anti-Semitism.

Abbott, 69, was responding to a writer’s claims that Irish, Jewish and Travelers suffer from racism. She said their experiences were similar to racism but there were differences.

“They undoubtedly experience prejudice. It’s similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they were interchangeable,” she wrote.

“It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, may experience this bias,” she said in the letter. “But they’re not lifelong subject to racism.”

Abbott, who has been a lawmaker since 1987, was the first black woman to be elected to parliament in Britain and is a close ally of Corbyn for whom she served as the party’s home affairs spokeswoman.

In his letter to the Observer, Abbott said that “in pre-Civil Rights America, Irishmen, Jews, and travelers were not required to sit in the back of the bus. In the “In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-looking people handcuffed on slave ships.”

She later apologized “unreservedly” and retracted her remarks.

“The errors occurred when sending a first draft,” she said in a post on Twitter. “But there is no excuse, and I apologize for any anguish caused.”

A Labor Party spokeswoman said she had been suspended pending an investigation.

British politicians condemned his comments made in the letter. Energy Secretary Grant Shapps, who is Jewish, said on Twitter that “once again the Jewish people must wake up to a Labor MP casually spouting hateful anti-Semitism.”

Corbyn himself has been suspended and barred from standing as a Labor candidate in the next general election due next year after claiming anti-Semitism within the party during his leadership had been “grossly exaggerated” for political reasons.

Britain’s equality watchdog said earlier this year that Labor had made enough changes in the past two years to tackle anti-Semitism.

Reporting by Andrew MacAskill Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[ad_2]