ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:     Well let’s return to the issue of anti-Semitism and that report from the Home Affairs Select Committee, Jeremy Newmark who I mentioned is the national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement and he joins me now. I’m sure you have read through what the committee has had to say and have listened to Mr Loughton there.  He is basically saying we have looked into all forms of anti-Semitism in society but Labour in terms of the political parties is still not doing enough about it.  

JEREMY NEWMARK: Well I think it has been understandable that there has been a focus on the Labour party in recent months.  We have to remember that anti-Semitism is an issue that affects all political parties.  A year or two ago we were talking about senior Tory ministers organising Nazi themed stag nights and not being appropriately disciplined or suspended from the party as a consequence but, for better or for worse and primarily for worse, there has been a focus on the Labour party in recent months.  

DM: You therefore don’t accept that it’s worse within the Labour party?   

JEREMY NEWMARK: I think it’s different.  Anti-Semitism is a distinct form of hatred that’s been around for millennia and it mutates like a virus and it appears in different forms, neither the left nor the right of British politics has a monopoly on anti-Semitism.  The Labour party has had its own problems, has acknowledged those problems over recent months and has put in place a package of efforts and attempts to deal with them ranging from the Labour Students Inquiry into Oxford University Labour Club, the investigation carried out by Baroness Jan Royall, more recently the Shami Chakrabarti report and of course a number of MPs were also involved in Mr Loughton’s Home Affairs Select Committee investigation.  

DM: I’ve got to ask you, because that Chakrabarti report, you just heard what Mr Loughton had to say about it, he more or less said that Shami Chakrabarti took a peerage almost immediately afterwards, that seemed to have been a bit of a carrot dangled before her, his implication not mine.  Do you though think it was independent and came out with some firm recommendations?

JEREMY NEWMARK:  Look we want to see the recommendations of the Chakrabarti report implemented because at the end of the day politicians, professional politicians will spend their time arguing over personalities.  We represent Jewish members of the Labour party who are concerned about the substance of anti-Semitism within the party and what our members want to see is the package of measures recommended from the Royall Report, in the Chakrabarti report and elsewhere actually implemented.  There is strong rhetoric and the rhetoric has got better from the leadership of the party in recent weeks and in particular at party conference, we need to see that translated into action and we think that’s where the focus should be.

DM: But doesn’t it require education, education at the top?  It is quite simple isn’t it, you just say to your members, people understand and people understand within Israel, there is major opposition within Israel as you and I know to the actions of the Israeli state and that the actions of the Israeli state are not the actions of all Jews?

JEREMY NEWMARK: You would think it would be that simple and actually one of the things where there does seem to be consensus between the Royall Report, the Chakrabarti Report and the Home Affairs Select Committee is that idea that Zionism or Zio as an epithet should no longer be acceptable in discourse on the left or within the Labour party as a means to attack Jewish people.  I think that’s one of the positive steps forward.   

DM: Tell that to Ken Livingstone.   

JEREMY NEWMARK: Well Ken Livingstone has been suspended by the party and …

DM: Do you think he should be thrown out?  

JEREMY NEWMARK: I do and one of the real litmus tests as to whether or not the party has moved on on the issue of anti-Semitism is whether or not, in a post-Chakrabarti Labour party there is still space for people like Ken Livingstone who over an extended period of time almost built a career out of calibrating those kinds of insults to cause the maximum hurt, pain and offence towards Jewish people.  The party was right to suspend him, that was a step in the right direction but now they need to finish the job.

DM: Good talking to you Mr Newmark, thank you very much indeed.  

ent]