Tag: Ken Livingstone

NOVANEWS A Labour Party committee upheld the charges leveled at Ken Livingstone for his comments about the links between Hitler and Zionism last year, but did not expel the former mayor of London from its ranks. The time-limited sanction has provoked outrage from Jewish groups. Following two days of legal and historical deliberations behind closed doors, the National Constitutional Committee found the 71-year-old, who had been suspended from the party since April 2016, guilty of three counts of conduct that is “prejudicial or… grossly detrimental to the party.” Livingstone, who says that he has no plans to return to frontline politics, is barred from holding any position in the party, or running as a Labour candidate until April 2018. In the wake of the hearing, an unrepentant Livings...

NOVANEWS By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice  The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims. Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party...

NOVANEWS Ahead of a British Labour Party disciplinary hearing, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has defended himself against accusations of 'anti-Semitism'. He also denied saying that Hitler was a Zionist, but said that he just claimed that Nazi policy “had the effect of supporting”  Zionism. Livingstone on Tuesday posted a 17-page summary of the defence he will present later in the week before the party’s National Constitutional Committee. He was suspended from the party following an April 2016 interview with BBC radio in which he said, “Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism.” Livingstone made the remarks in defence of Labour lawmaker Naz Shah, who was suspended a day earlier over a...