Jeremy Corbyn's leadership was riddled with accusations of anti-Semitism, with the party accused of failing to protect the Jewish community from this discrimination.

“This investigation has shown a clear breakdown of trust between the Labour Party, many of its members and the Jewish community,”, stated a report by the European Human Rights Commission published on the 29^thOctober 2020.

The report documented “serious failings in leadership” resulting in discrimination towards Jewish members of the Labour Party, including instances of political interference, grievances concerning social media, and cases of ‘borderline harassment’.

This affirmed what many British Jewish citizens feared; that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was structurally anti-Semitic. The trust between the Jewish community and the Labour Party had broken down, and rebuilding this confidence was “crucial for the future” of democracy.

The former leader was then suspended from the Labour Party. But it was not the investigation’s findings that led this, it was his response.

Corbyn stated that the issue was “dramatically overstated for political reason” by both political opponents and the media.

Adam Langleben, the campaigns officer of the Jewish Labour Movement, was a Labour Party councillor in the London Borough of Barnet between 2014 and 2018:

“He was suspended for his response, but in reality, he should have been suspended for allowing there to be an investigation in the first place.”

Langleben initially joined the party feeling that Labour values complemented his Jewish beliefs. In 2015, he watched as Corbyn’s leadership encouraged thousands of British voters to join the party, with the membership total doubling in just over half a year.

However, Langleben explained that this influx of members also included a “very problematic minority” of people who created an antisemitic atmosphere.

“I just became completely mistrusted, and whenever I raised the issue of anti-Semitism, I was laughed out the room.”

He added: “And over the course of five years, we eventually realised that the Labour leadership weren't interested in dealing with these people.”

Langleben resigned from the Labour Party in March 2019, making the tough decision to not vote for them in the 2019 General Election.

“I lost faith,” he explained, “But it was a complicated relationship because although I'm still no longer in the Labour Party, at the same time, I can’t get away from it.

“In a free democratic society, you should be able to cast your vote based on the values that you believe in. You shouldn't have to feel like you have to cast your vote based on your own security.”

Corbyn’s successor, Keir Starmer, has promised to implement the recommendations of the EHRC’s report and flush out anti-Semitism.

“I’m feeling the most positive I’ve been in five years. I think there’s room for optimism,” Langleben agrees, “A lot of what he [Starmer] is doing is dragging the party, kicking and screaming, to some kind of reasonable discourse.”

“I think they’re making really good progress. I think the very fact that lots of people are resigning is really a good thing, because one of our key asks of the previous Labour leadership was to make unity, and create a hostile environment for anti-Semitism. And the previous leadership weren't willing to send the right messages… but it’s going to be a very, very long road.”

However, not all Jewish members agree with the EHRC’s findings.

Jonathan Rosenhead has been active on-and-off within the Labour Party for the last fifty-eight years; becoming a parliamentary Labour candidate in 1966, before resigning from the party in the eighties:

“I came back the day that Jeremy Corbyn was elected because it seems that the Labour party was finding its principles again.”

Rosenhead asserts that the party he has supported his whole life is not antisemitic, and that accusations were over-exaggerated to attack Corbyn’s Labour:

“Never a single occasion have I heard anyone say anything anti-Semitic about me, about anything else to anyone else… it just doesn’t happen.

“I’ve been political most of my life, but I never thought that being Jewish was an important part of my being political. It's very strange that it has become slur, because anti-Semitism was turned into the most damaging attack on the left and on Corbyn.”

Rosenhead is an officer in the Jewish Voice for Labour, a Jewish network focused on universal human rights, who say that accusations of anti-Semitism are being overstated:

“We know what anti-Semitism is because we've experienced it. Our parents had it worse: they lived through the period of the Holocaust… we deeply resent it being weaponized to try to prevent criticism of Israel and to attack those like Corbyn, who took a principled view about Palestine.

“The number of people who have been actually even accused or investigated for anti-Semitism is one third of one percent of the membership: one in three hundred.”

The JVL is continuously scrutinising the EHRC report and say there is “no finding of institutional antisemitism in the Report nor does it provide evidence of widespread antisemitism”.

Rosenhead questions the report’s legitimacy: “It's not about how much anti-Semitism there is in the Labour Party… as it found really very little evidence to suggest that.

“It doesn't mean we [JVL] necessarily disagree with the conclusions, but that it was a vehicle to get rid of problems and was successful in doing that.”

Rosenhead admits he places greater trust in former leader, Corbyn, than current leader, Starmer: “He [Corbyn] wasn't anti-Semitic: he supported all kinds of Jewish activities in Islington throughout his 30-something years.

“Jeremy is a wonderful human being, he’s extraordinary. He didn't have the skills set: never wanted to be leader, didn't have any of the training; how to tell half-truths or avoid questions… He’s a terrible leader.

“Starmer… he’s very good at those things. But unfortunately, unlike Jeremy, his honesty and straightforwardness is not a strong point.”