The Labour Party’s compliance unit took months to act on some of its most high-profile anti-Semitism cases, according to a cache of hundreds of leaked emails that reveal the party’s failure to swiftly address allegations of racism.



Emails between two former senior members of the Labour compliance unit, Sam Matthews and John Stolliday, and other party officials show the unit took more than a year to suspend a member who defended British fascists involved in the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, and eight months to suspend a council candidate who posted an article that said the Holocaust was a “hoax”.

The first was only suspended after a senior member of the party’s governing body, the National Executive Committee, intervened and nearly 300 Labour members signed a petition. Action was only taken against the "Holocaust hoax" candidate when his posts were shared on social media by anti-racism campaigners.

The compliance unit also took nearly a year to launch a formal investigation into further comments made by Ken Livingstone on Hitler and Zionism, who was already serving a two-year suspension over previous remarks.

The emails were passed to BuzzFeed News by a former Labour Party official and a member of the Labour International group, who both said they wanted to expose failings in the compliance unit’s response to anti-Semitism complaints before Jennie Formby became general secretary in April 2018.

Corbyn has been accused of failing to adequately address anti-Semitism within the party. The crisis has soured Labour's relationship with Jewish voters and led to the resignation of MPs including Luciana Berger.

The former Labour official who shared the emails said: “These emails show Labour’s compliance unit prior to Jennie Formby taking over failed to suspend members who had made appalling anti-Semitic remarks for over a year, despite clear evidence and repeated attempts by colleagues and complainants to seek action.”