Ex local Labour chair suspended over social media posts including Shoah denial

A former local Labour chair in Dorset has been suspended from Labour pending an investigation after a trove of allegedly antisemitic material was uncovered, JN understands.

Mollie Collins, 83, from Weymouth, retired as chair of South Dorset CLP in July, and has a seat on Labour’s south west regional board. She also stood for Labour in May’s council elections in Dorset.

The material, which included Shoah denial and conspiracy theories relating to 9/11 and the Rothschild family, was unearthed by the Twitter account @GnasherJew.

The former council candidate told JN she was issued a warning from Labour’s compliance unit several years ago on her social media activity.

In an email, she confirmed she published the material herself and said she was a Jeremy Corbyn supporter and “anti-rascist [sic]”.

“I used to be a Debater at school and thought we shared on Facebook for interesting discussions. In fact have seen many on 9/11,” she wrote.

The ex-council candidate also said that she was “employed by Jewish entrpreneurs [sic] who were my friends and we wined and dined together” before retiring.

“The nephew of Jack Cohen, Tesco, married my sister’s best friend and I attended their wedding and they mine,” she wrote.

Among the posts discovered on her timeline was a picture of a white sheet, shared in June 2016, printed with the slogan “Rothschilds bankers did 9/11 Not Muslims”.

Another post, sent in January 2016, since deleted on the advice of a friend, was a link to an article headlined “The Realist Report: How the ‘Holocaust’ was faked.”

The blog-post described the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust as “the biggest lie ever foisted upon humanity.”

“The very idea that the Germans organized and executed a complex conspiracy involving ‘homicidal gas chambers’ and other barbaric, sadistic forms of mass murder designed to exterminate European Jewry during WWII is laughable on its face when you stop and objectively think about it,” it read.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party takes all complaints of antisemitism extremely seriously, which are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken. We cannot comment on individual cases.”