Britain’s Labour party has dropped charges against Hodge that were made after she called Corbyn an anti-Semite.
By: World Israel News Staff
A dispute within the United Kingdom’s Labour Party over whether leading Jewish lawmaker Margaret Hodge should face a disciplinary review for calling party leader Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite has ended with the party dropping an investigation into her conduct.
Labour’s General Secretary Jennie Formby wrote to Dame Margaret on Monday to tell her the investigation has ended, with no action to be taken, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
Hodge, who has long roots in the Labour Party, lost family members in the Holocaust. She has challenged Corbyn over his mishandling of the anti-Semitism plaguing the party.
“I am going to fight within the Labour Party, and it is terrible that in 2018 I have to do that,” she told the BBC, adding that she had been slow to conclude that Corbyn was an anti-Semite but will not back down.
“I have always in the past disagreed with the people who have called him an anti-Semite but, at the end of the day, people have to be judged on what they do and not what they say. They have to be judged on their actions and not their words,” she said.
“Just to be clear: there have been no apologies – on either side,” Hodge tweeted on Monday after the dispute ended.
“I’m pleased that the Labour Party has finally dropped their ‘action’ against me. After 55 years of LP membership going after me instead of addressing the issue was wrong. In 2018 anti-Semitism that has again reared its ugly head and the campaign against it goes on,” she added.
Hodge made the remarks against Corbyn when a crisis within Labour’s ranks was spurred over a new definition of anti-Semitism, proposed by the party’s executive committee, which in large part embraces the position taken by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) but excludes several examples that the alliance cites as anti-Semitic, specifically those pertaining to Israel.
The alliance, for example, says it is anti-Semitic to accuse Jewish people of being more loyal to Israel than to their home country, an example not picked up by Labour. The alliance also says it is anti-Semitic to compare contemporary Israeli policies to the policies of the Nazis, a view Labour did not endorse.
Hodge again called on Labour to “adopt the IHRA definition in full to start to rebuild trust.”
AP contributed to this report.