Eight dodgy things Ken Livingstone has said about Jews, and Hitler

Ken Livingstone 
Springtime for Livingstone  Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/LNP

Ken Livingstone has escaped expulsion from the Labour Party over his remarks about Hitler and Zionism.  Although some might wonder why he hadn't been kicked out ages ago.

Mr Livingstone was editor of the "Labour Herald" during the 1980s, a time when the weekly published an article alleging that Zionists prevented the rescue of European Jewry from the Holocaust, and a cartoon depicting Mr Menachem Begin, then Israel Prime Minister in Nazi uniform, standing on a heap of corpses and giving the Nazi salute over the heading "The Final Solution".

The former Mayor of London has an extensive track record for making off-colour comments about Jews, the Holocaust and Hitler, as a delve into the archive shows. I'm grateful to Aberystwyth University's Dr James Vaughan for wading through the Labour Herald annals in his Livingstone retrospective.

Here are just eight controversial moments from Mr Livingstone's past. 

1982: Jewish MPs are a "distortion" running through politics

In a piece for the Labour Herald arguing in favour of supporting The Palestine Liberation Organisation in its fight against Israel, Mr Livingstone took his party to task for its "little response" to the conflict. 

This, he suggested, was because "there is a distortion running right the way through British politics",  as "a majority of Jews in this country supported the Labour Party and elected a number of Jewish Labour MPs".

By contrast, he wrote, "if we had a similar war in southern Africa, there would be demands for emergency debates in Parliament."

1983: British troops in Ulster are like the Nazis

Ken Livingstone caused outrage in London after comparing British troops in Northern Ireland to the Nazi persecution of the Jews. A Conservative MEP lambasted him in an open letter for "a wilful ignorance of the horrors of the holocaust, the genocidal murder of millions of Jews, and the diabolical destruciton of human life at Auschwitz and other concentration camps".

1984: Jews are Arabs

Ken Livingstone left astonished the Board of Deputies after claiming that Jews were "basically a tribe of Arabs". Speaking to the socialist newspaper Tribune, he added: "There is no racial difference between Jew and Arab".

1984: Jews stopped voting Labour as they became reactionary

Speaking to "Davar", the newspaper published by the Israel's organization of trade unions, Mr Livingstone tried to explain why Jews in Britain were not so keen to vote Labour. They had always supported his party, he insisted, until Menachem Begin came onto the political stage and then "suddenly the Jews became reactionaries, turned Right, nearly to be fascists".

1984: Extremist Jews are organising against me

Speaking again to "Davar", Mr Livingstone claimed that "extremist Jews" were organising "paramilitary groups, which resemble fascist organisations", in London and elsewhere. "It is obvious that those Jews will try to hurt me and my reputation," he added. 

2000: Capitalists are worse than Hitler

Ken Livingstone didn't go out of his way to charm the City of London in his first bid to be elected London Mayor. Answering questions from the readers of NME magazine, he declared: "Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two. But at least Hitler was mad."

2005: Livingstone compares a Jewish journalist to a Nazi

Ken Livingstone was famously suspended as the Mayor of London for four weeks for bringing his office into disrepute by comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi, although he later overturned the suspension in court.

The encounter happened as he was leaving City Hall after a party. A reporter from the Evening Standard, Oliver Finegold, asked him whether he had enjoyed the party, and was compared to a "German war criminal" in response.

After telling him that he was Jewish and found the remark offensive, Mr Livingstone said he was like a "concentration camp guard" who was only following orders.

2012: Jews support the Tories because they have got rich

In his fight to get re-elected as London Mayor, Mr Livingstone suggested that British Jews switched their support from Labour to Conservative because they had got richer.

He told BBC’s Newsnight programme:

"People vote according to their income. Now that can change – it might be a generation before people catch up. If we were talking 50 years ago, the Roman Catholic community, the Irish community in Britain, the Jewish community was solidly Labour. Still the Irish Catholic community is pretty still solidly Labour because it is not terribly rich.
