British police have made three arrests after a leaked dossier on anti-Semitism within the Labour Party was leaked to a radio station, who passed the files on to law enforcement.
The file of an internal Labour Party investigation into anti-Semitism by its own members was leaked to London-based talk radio station LBC last year, and contained alleged social media posts by Labour activists.
Allegations include the long-term anti-Semitic bullying of a child by a Labour councillor. Some of the messages recorded in the report were extreme and violent in nature, and included claims such as “We shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all [sic]” and “Zionist extremist MP who hates civilised people about to get a good kicking”.
Three people have now been arrested on the basis of the information, reports The Times, who were identified only as two men in their 50s in Tunbridge Wells and Birmingham, and a London woman in her 70s. The paper reports that the three are no longer Labour Party members, and that the party released a statement supporting the work of police.
The arrests come after years of growing scrutiny of anti-Semitic behaviour within Labour, which has appeared to surge under hard-left, pro-Palestine leader Jeremy Corbyn. Breitbart London reported in 2018 that the frequency and severity of anti-Semitic incidents within the party had become so pronounced that Corbyn’s leadership made that year’s Simon Wiesenthal Center list of anti-Semitism worldwide.
In their annual report, the group said the prospect of a left-wing Labour government in the United Kingdom represented no less than an “existential threat to Jews” and said Mr Corbyn was “directly responsible” for “injecting the world’s oldest hatred into the mainstream of society”.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also criticised the anti-Semitism crisis within Labour, speaking this week to label their handling of the issue a “national disgrace”.
The ongoing scandal was one of the contributing factors to the minor party split earlier this year, which saw nine members of Parliament decide to go their own way, citing anti-Semitism — eight going to a new splinter party, The Independent Group (TIG), and one becoming an independent.
Responding to the defections, Mr Corbyn insisted that Labour was a natural ally to those fighting anti-Semitism.
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook