The Labour Party is being rocked by allegations of anti-Semitism from a number of sources. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has claimed that Jeremy Corbyn is leading Labour into a “dark place of ugly conspiracy theories”, while many Jewish supporters of the Labour Party are distressed at what they perceive as a growing anti-Semitic strain in a party that has traditionally had a strong appeal for Jewish voters.
But, as George Orwell pointed out in his 1945 essay on “Anti-Semitism in Britain”, there has always been prejudice against Jews, on the left as well as on the right. The working-class attitude to Jews was often hostile. He quoted “a very eminent figure in the Labour Party” who said to him, of Jewish immigrants: “We never asked these people to come to this country. If they choose to come here, let them take the consequences.”
