Labour suspension over Jews, Nazis and Mossad remarks

A Labour Party member has been suspended after a series of offensive remarks on Jews, Nazis and Mossad.

Action was taken against Terence Flanagan, who had been a member in Hampstead and Kilburn, after a dossier including 17 separate pieces of evidence was submitted to the party’s compliance unit. Many of the remarks were in no way linked go Israel.

Camden councillor Phil Rosenberg complained Flanagan compared him and others to Josef Goebbels in comments in local media – later refusing to retract and apologise – after not getting immediate answers to technical questions on housing.

Last month, he sent a petition to a large list of email addresses, many of whom he had never met, calling for the expulsion of Michael Foster for comparing Corbyn supporters to Nazi stormtroopers. Flanagan allegedly referred to the donor, not by his name, but as “the Jewish millionaire”.

In another email, he spoke of “the Mossad organised collection orchestrating the attack upon the members choice Jeremy Corbyn”, adding that supporters of Israel were “polluting” the party.

Rosenberg said: “Terence Flanagan has been repeatedly abusive to me, other councillors and other Labour Party members – sometimes through the media. Too often, his language crossed the line in to clear anti-Semitism.”

Saying the suspension “gave me no pleasure”, he added: “I would much rather that he had acknowledged and learned from his earlier, unacceptable behaviour, but he would not. In the end, this had to be the right decision by the Party.

“Our politics has to be big enough for robust debate, but crass racial slurs and bullying behaviour must have no place in our Party or in our politics.”