Crawley Borough's Labour Leader Denies Making Anti-Semitism Report

Wednesday, 1 July 2020 18:13

By Karen Dunn, Local Democracy Reporter

Crawley. (Map: contributors to Open Street Map / Creative Commons)

The leader of Crawley Borough Council has denied that he or any of the Labour Group reported one their own to the Party leadership on suspicion of anti-Semitism.

Karen Sudan, who has since quit the party and now serves the people of Northgate and West Green as an Independent, said she didn’t know who reported her but didn’t think it was a member of the public.

Leader Peter Lamb denied the suggestion that the report came from one of the Crawley group.

He said:

“I think she thinks it’s me but I’m not an idiot.

“If we were going to put in a complaint against someone, we’d wait until the end of the year when you get the chance at the local elections to replace them with some one else.”

The Labour Party’s investigation into Mrs Sudan centred around three Tweets.

The first, which was written in June 2017, announced that she opposed ‘all kinds of racism’ but had ‘blocked Labour Against Anti Semitism’.

The second, written in August 2018, accused the mainstream media of being ‘too busy making up and/or exaggerating stories about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party’ to raise an outcry over other forms of racism.

And the third, written in January, shared a link to an article titled Reject The Ten Pledges.

The article claimed the idea that there was an anti-Semitism problem within the party had been ‘widely debunked’ and called an interjection by the Board of Deputies ‘politically motivated weaponisation of anti-Semitism to attack the left and the Palestine solidarity movement’.

Mr Lamb said:

“Reading through the text of what was submitted, it looks very professionally written to my mind – which rather removes anyone in the Labour group.

“I think what’s happened is someone’s been nationally trawling through Labour accounts trying to find any historical Tweets which may well constitute anti-Semitism.

“Potentially some one at headquarters on the basis that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission report is coming out in the next week.”

The commission launched an investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party in May 2019, after receiving a number of complaints.