Chatham and Aylesford Labour share antisemitic post, no one even notices

There’s been a lot of media attention on apparently antisemitic acts and comments from certain people within the Labour Party over recent years, but thankfully this is not something we have thus far had to cover here in Medway.

Unfortunately, the Chatham and Aylesford Labour Party have stupidly shared the above post on their Facebook page for the last four months, seemingly without anyone in the party noticing, question it’s existence, or taking actions to remove it.

Back in July, a user named Brian Mckenna shared the above post to the community section of the Chatham and Aylesford Labour Party Facebook page. Discussing a grim event in the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the post uses terms like “direct, hostile Jewish operations” and “Jewish military action”. These terms are quotes from a report, their use in a post to a Labour Party social media channel in 2019 is questionable.

Within hours, one of the administrators of the Facebook page decided to share and amplify the content to the parties followers on the platform. The post has remained visible on the front page of the Chatham and Aylesford Labour Party Facebook page in the four months since, though we have to assume it may disappear fairly rapidly now. The question though is why no one from Chatham branch questioned this content in those four months, from those on the executive of the party to the six Labour councillors that exist in Medway wards.

Were they not paying attention enough to notice that it was even there, or did they not see any problem with the implications of the post? Either option paints a troubling picture.

We have received the following statement from the Chair of Chatham and Aylesford Labour Party in response to this article:

As a CLP we take all aspects of equality seriously. It has been bought to our attention that a post which should not have been on our page was posted and subsequently reposted by a someone who is no longer a member of our CLP. This post is not in line with our aims and values and has been removed. We apologise for this post and any offence caused.
We will urgently review the safeguards for our Facebook page to ensure such activity doesn’t happen moving forward.

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