Jewish community subject to abuse not seen since time of KKK, senior Tory says

The UK’s Jewish community is being subjected to abuse not seen since the days of the Ku Klux Klan in the US, a former minister has said.

Conservative MP Sir Michael Ellis said the abuse of Jewish people in the UK is “becoming an emergency situation” and follows Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

Speaking in the Commons, Sir Michael listed reports of alleged antisemitic incidents, and raised concerns over incidents he said took place on London’s transport system.

He was speaking in the Commons as MPs debated a Labour motion on town centre safety.

Sir Michael said: “In the 54 days between the Hamas attacks and last Wednesday, CST (Community Security Trust) recorded at least 1,747 antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom, that’s the highest ever total reported to CST across a 54-day period since CST was established 40 years ago in 1984.”

He added: “We now see members of a very small community, a Jewish community, which amounts to less than one half of 1% of the total population of this country, only about 250,000 people in a population of 70 million, being subject to the sort of abuse that frankly would not have been seen since the days of the Ku Klux Klan in America, and probably would have been the subject of disgust 70 or 80 years ago in this country, it certainly would have been at the time of the battle of Cable Street.

“So when it comes to safety for all, now is an opportunity for those who are not of the Jewish faith to support those who are.”

He gave examples of “abhorrent” incidents he said were a “disgrace to this country”.

“When it comes to safety in town centres, it is crucially important that safety applies to all,” he said, adding he would want to defend any ethnic group or faith subject to “those sorts of attacks”.

He told MPs: “I must demand that the police, that the mayor of London and everyone else in authority, including those responsible for Transport for London, immediately take action to deal with the examples that I have given.

“This is becoming an emergency situation. These offenders must be caught.”

The Ku Klux Klan, also known as the KKK, is a white supremacist terrorist organisation that originated in the US in the nineteenth century and which some historians describe as having had a second and third wave in the 1920s and 1960s respectively.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre says of the group: “The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups.

“Although black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, adherents also attack Jewish people, persons who have immigrated to the United States, and members of the LGBTQ community.”