UK – Ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone reveals jewish roots

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE – Ken Livingstone has claimed he might have Jewish roots. The former Mayor of London, who has been suspended from the Labour Party for arguing that Hitler supported Zionism, told the JC he might have Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side.

Asked to name a Jewish friend, he cited the late Lord Janner, a one-time fellow Labour MP.

He said: “Greville Janner used to drive me home from the House of Commons at night. We would chat away about the Middle East. He would speculate about whether or not I was Jewish because my grandmother’s name was Zona.”

Mr Livingstone said: “I have lots of Jewish friends and I always have. I have had members of the Board of Deputies round for parties.”

He added: “When I went to Israel and stopped by a kibbutz, I felt completely at home there. Everyone was a leftie like me.”

Denying that he was antisemitic, Mr Livingstone threatened to “go to court” if Labour officials expelled him from the party.

He said: “What judge, given the nature of the British legal system, will say: ‘You can punish someone for telling the truth’?

“I don’t think they will kick me out. I mean, how can they? I will turn up at the final hearing with all these documents. What are we going to do next, suspend people for saying ‘two plus two makes four’?”

He claimed that he had been stopped in the street by Jewish supporters near his home in Cricklewood, north-west London. He said: “They tell me they’re Jewish. They say: ‘We know what you said was true, don’t give in’.”

The former Labour MP, who is a close ally of party leader Jeremy Corbyn, added: “I find it bizarre that people who were suspended after me have already been reinstated; I am certain the reason my case is being dragged out is because next week is the closing deadline for nominations for Labour’s National Executive Committee and I won’t be allowed to stand unless I have been readmitted. It is the old Blairites trying to keep me off the NEC because I support Jeremy.

“It’s not really about antisemitism; it’s just about undermining Jeremy because I am one of Jeremy’s key supporters. All I want to focus on is Jeremy’s economic policies. Jeremy and I have been campaigning side by side for 45 years.”

Mr Livingstone has repeatedly turned down opportunities to retract his comments about Hitler and Zionism. He reiterated his claim that until three months ago, he had never encountered antisemitism in the Labour Party.

Asked about the decision to welcome Jackie Walker, a senior member of the hard-left Momentum group, back into the Labour Party after she claimed Jews were chief financiers of the slave trade, he said: “That doesn’t mean she was antisemitic, but it was wrong. People often get things wrong.”

Mr Livingstone denied that he was “obsessed” with Nazi history, claiming that he never even read the party’s manifesto or Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

“I haven’t read Karl Marx either,” he said. “I have never seen the Nazi manifesto. If I would have seen it, I would have read it. I have a thousand books I am still waiting to read, that I am trying to find time to read.

“Now I am retired, I am catching up. If anyone actually wants to send me a copy of it…”

He said he had not crossed the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism in making his comment about Hitler and Zionism.

“It is an absolutely ridiculous thing to conflate antisemitism with criticism of Israel,” he said. “I criticise David Cameron’s government, that doesn’t mean I’m anti-British.”

Asked what advice he would give to people to avoid criticism of Israel spilling into antisemitism, he said: “I wouldn’t get dug into the origins of Zionism and what Zionism really means. Just focus on the actual policies of the Israeli government. I don’t focus on the history”.

Mr Livingstone’s interview with the JC came after he gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into antisemitism on Tuesday.

At the hearing, he said he could have sued Labour MP John Mann, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, for calling him a “Nazi apologist”.

Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board, and the SNP’s leader in Westminster, Angus Robertson, were also giving evidence at the hearing.

Both said Mr Livingstone’s comments on Hitler were antisemitic, while committee member Chuka Umunna described Mr Livingstone as a “pin-up for prejudice”.

Mr Arkush told the committee, chaired by Labour MP Keith Vaz, that antisemitism was on the rise in the UK, adding that communal bodies and synagogues were guarded by security personnel, with some Jewish schools protected “like fortresses”.

The Board president said he accepted that criticism of Israel was not antisemitic but was concerned when it was made by people “averting their eyes” from other international issues.

“If you were only focused on one place to the exclusion of other, I do wonder,” he said.

Mr Livingstone told the committee that, while Mayor of London, he had had a dispute in 2006 with property developers David and Simon Reuben, over a site for the London Olympics. Mr Livingstone controversially told the brothers, who are of Iraqi-Jewish descent, to “go back” to their country.

Now, Mr Livingstone said that he had not known that the brothers were of Jewish decent. He even claimed that one of their sons, “I can’t remember which one”, called him afterwards to discuss other matters.

Mr Livingstone said: “I know they’re quite secretive, so I thought I would be really rude to them and put them in the spotlight.

“After that, the son of one of them phoned me and said: ‘We know you’re not antisemitic; you just wanted my parents out of this deal’.”