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The granddaughter of late Labour great Tony Benn has suffered abuse after criticising Jeremy Corbyn ’s attempts to deal with the party’s anti-Semitism crisis.

Emily Benn had branded an article written by Mr Corbyn for the Guardian newspaper as “rubbish”.

But she was “angry and sickened” after a trade union official said her comments “could probably power a medium sized town from the energy generated by your grandfather’s rate of rotation in his grave”.

Ray Ellis, a national officer with the CWU, was condemned for his tweet.

One message read: “Tony Benn would be horrified at you speaking such venom in his name – especially to members of his own family.”

Shamed Mr Ellis then replied: “Possibly. He was much kinder than I am.”

But Ms Benn refused to accept that as an apology and has now complained to Mr Ellis’s union.

(Image: Reuters)

News of the row comes as Labour MP Ian Austin today warns his party could lose the next election unless Mr Corbyn gets a grip on anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, questions were being asked about why Laura Murray – one of Mr Corbyn’s top advisers – removed a tweet express-ing her anger at anti-Semitic outpourings from Labour members.

Sources said she decided to remove it after “facing abuse” from all sides.

We can also reveal three Labour councillors accused of anti-Semitism – Luke Cresswell, Billy J Wells and Andy Slack – returned to the party unpunished. Labour said all antiSemitism complaints are “investigated in line with our rules”.

But a Jewish Labour Movement spokesman said: “There’s one rule for Jews, and one rule for everyone else.”

Former Labour MP Tom Harris yesterday quit the party, saying: “It’s just not the place for me anymore.”

What would heroes who fought to liberate the death camps think?

By Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North

The Mirror and the Labour Party have always stood shoulder to shoulder to fight racism. Remember how the paper campaigned with Hope Not Hate to take on the BNP.

Fighting racism is one of the reasons I joined the party as a teenager.

I grew up listening to my dad tell me how he fled his Czechoslovakian home just after the Nazis invaded. His Jewish mum and sisters were murdered in the Treblinka death camp in 1942.

So like many Labour members I’m horrified our party has caused so much offence to Jewish people.

In the last few weeks the party had to suspend a councillor over an online post claiming Jews drink blood and sexually abuse children.

Last year’s conference gave a platform at a fringe event to a speaker asking: “Holocaust: yes or no?” What would British heroes who fought to liberate those camps make of that?

We’ve had Ken Livingstone’s offensive nonsense about Hitler supporting Zionists. Others claimed Jews were the chief financiers of the slave trade or drew disgusting comparisons between Israel’s actions and the crimes of the Nazis.

Jeremy Corbyn himself defended a horrible racist caricature on a London mural. He even hosted an event in Parliament on Holocaust Memorial Day that compared the Israeli government to the Nazis.

On Friday he wrote an article that made matters worse by completely failing to make the changes that are needed. Instead, he repeated some of the things that caused the problem.

He needs to start listening and adopt the standard international definition of anti-Semitism and all its examples. He must respond properly to the reasonable requests made by the Jewish Leadership Council, Board of Deputies and Jewish Labour Movement and kick the racists out of our party.

This is not about curtailing criticism of Israel. The standard definition explicitly says “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic” but the leadership’s changes will let racists off the hook.

The reason he’s struggling to resolve this crisis is that he’s spent the last 40 years mixing with or defending all manner of extremists and, in some cases, anti-Semites.

Millions of people desperately need a Labour government but under Jeremy, the Labour Party looks like a very different party to the one I joined all those years ago.

Many people will not vote for a hard-left party mired in racism.

We need to get back to mainstream common-sense politics before the British people will trust us to form a government that can make the changes Britain needs.