Britain’s Labour Party Suspends Member for ‘Big Noses’ Jibe at Jews
The Labour Party in Britain has suspended a member for the second time for saying Jews have “big noses” and “slaughter the oppressed.”
Vicki Kirby, a former parliamentary candidate, was suspended Monday. Her comments in old tweets resurfaced after she was made a local vice chair of the party last week.
Other tweets claimed that Hitler might be the “Zionist God” and that she would make sure to have her “kids teach their children how evil Israel is.”
Kirby originally was suspended from the party in 2014. She was readmitted and appointed vice chairman of Labour’s branch in Woking, a town in the southeast Surrey county.
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had been under fire for allowing the appointment. Several party members brought up the issue at a parliamentary meeting on Monday, the Guardian reported. Senior Labour leader Louise Ellman said relations between the party and the Jewish community had hit “rock bottom.”
The party announced Kirby’s suspension hours after the meeting.
A spokesman for Corbyn said “he thinks that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are vile, he has spent his whole life campaigning against it and will continue to do so.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
