SCOTTISH Labour look set to be dragged into the anti-Semitism debate that has dogged the party south of the border.
Members in East Renfrewshire have written to the Scottish Executive Committee asking them to break with colleagues and “implement the full and unamended [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of anti-Semitism.”
On Tuesday, the NEC, Labour’s ruling body, ignored the pleas of Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis and 65 other senior clerics, and decided to use their own definition of anti-Semitism in a new code of conduct being drawn up.
That code will take some but not all of the IHRA’s well established definition. Controversially the party code says “contentious” remarks about Israel will “not be treated as anti-Semitism unless accompanied by specific anti-Semitic content”.
In his letter, Ben Proctor, the chair of the constituency Labour party in East Renfrewshire, said his party “no longer wish to listen to those who understand anti-semitism best – the Jewish community.”
He added:“While there is inaction on a UK level, we in Scotland have a duty to act.”
A Scottish Labour Party spokesman pointed out that the NEC had also “agreed to re-open the development of the code, in consultation with Jewish community organisations and groups”.
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