Chris Williamson’s independent run in Derby North

Chris Williamson made Labour’s antisemitism problem worse, and he deserves to lose his seat in Parliament. HOPE not hate will help make that happen, writes Nick Lowles.

It’s apt that Chris Williamson‘s resignation letter contained an antisemitic trope. I was shocked by the vitriol, but sadly not surprised.

Williamson should have had no place in the Labour Party, and HOPE not hate welcomed his long-overdue departure from the party. His pattern of behaviour warranted swift and decisive action against him that just never came. It says much about Labour’s failures that Williamson turned his back on the party rather than the other way round.

Now that Chris Williamson has indicated that he intends to stand as an independent candidate, HOPE not hate will campaign to ensure that the people of Derby are fully aware of his harmful and dangerous views. We are confident that both he and his gutter politics will be rejected at the ballot box.

It’s worth repeating exactly what his track record is.

• He has routinely downplayed the seriousness of antisemitism, calling it ‘bullshit’ and ‘a smear’.
• He has publicly supported those who have already been removed from the party for antisemitism, such as Ken Livingstone, who falsely claimed that Hitler was a Zionist, and disgraced party activist Jackie Walker. He chose to stand alongside them, most recently at Labour Party Conference in September during the Labour Against the Witchhunt fringe event.
• He promoted a petition in support of Gilad Atzmon, a man who has denounced ‘the Holocaust religion’ and who suggested that there is a Zionist plan for world domination.
• Williamson reasserted his support for Pete Willsman after a recording surfaced of Willsman ranting about Rabbis and that antisemitism in the Party has been fabricated by Israel, an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Not only this, he campaigned for the reinstatement of Marc Wadsworth who attacked Ruth Smeeth MP at the launch of the Chakrabarti report for ‘working hand in hand with the press’.
• He booked a room in parliament to host a screening of the film ‘Witch Hunt’, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist documentary that downplays and dismisses the issues of antisemitism in the Labour party.
• He has continually baited Jewish people, including tweeting in support of disgraced Assadist and antisemite Vanessa Bealey, and tweeting support for Scott Nelson, who was removed from the Labour party for tweeting that Tesco and Marks and Spencers were ‘Jewish companies’ that had ‘Jewish blood’.
• In his letter resigning from the Labour Party, he accused the Israeli government of being to blame for accusations of antisemitism, alleging that the Jewish Labour Movement and Britain First were also behind the crisis.