Brit Forced to Resign for Criticizing Jews
Source: Jewish Chronicle, August 18, 2000
Labour Councillors Quit Party Whip Over
Holocaust Day Row
By Bernard Josephs, Political Editor
A LABOUR councillor has resigned the party whip after a row over how to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in a rural community.
The dispute stemmed from a meeting between the chief executive of North Norfolk district council and councillors, which failed to produce a programme.
Labour councillors — who share power with the Liberal Democrats — reacted angrily at the revelation that their representative at the meeting, deputy council leader Roy Haynes, had claimed in a letter to the chief executive, Bruce Barrell, that “in terms of atrocities, the Jews themselves are not entirely blameless.”
Mr Haynes told the JC that although he believed that the Holocaust was “a disaster of the first magnitude and should not be forgotten,” he recalled the activities of the “Stern Gang in the late ’40s and, more recently, [events in] Palestine.”
Internal protests prompted North Norfolk Labour Party to launch an inquiry into his remarks. But Mr Haynes and a sympathetic Labour councillor, Liz Cornwall, decided to relinquish the party whip.
Meanwhile, there was also anger that no agreement had been reached on marking Holocaust Day.
Labour group leader Councillor Mike Cullingham was “surprised and disappointed.” Remembering the Holocaust was not just an “issue for the past.”
He was supported by the council’s only Jewish member, Aubrey Poberefsky of Labour, who described Mr Haynes’s letter as “disgusting and unacceptable.”
