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Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire has said she is ‘just sad’ after she faced being summoned by her own party members to ‘explain herself’ as Labour’s bitter civil war over antisemitism arrived in the city.

The party has become increasingly divided over whether people within Labour have been acting in an anti-Semitic way, or whether the claims that they are have been created or exaggerated by political opponents of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour.

The interminable row will continue this week with the focus shifting from London to Bristol, when the constituency Labour Party group covering Bristol West hold a meeting.

One motion and another counter-motion have already been submitted to the Bristol West constituency party (CLP) as some members want to call on their MP to explain what she was doing in London last week.

A protest was held in Westminster calling for more to be done to rid politics of antisemitism. Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire attended the demo, along with a number of other Labour MPs, as well as Lib Dem, Conservative and DUP ones.

The demonstration was reported by some national media as an attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his alleged failure to do more to rid the party of anti-Jewish sentiment.

Thangam Debbonaire’s presence at this demo angered some in her constituency party, and a motion which would censure her has been put forward to be debated and voted on at Thursday’s meeting.

It calls for Ms Debbonaire, who was re-elected as Bristol West MP in 2016 with a 37,336 majority – one of the largest in the country - to attend another meeting to ‘explain her actions’.

“Thangam Debbonaire… should not have joined Tory and DUP MPs to protest against unspecified and unsubstantiated allegations of ‘anti-semitism’ in her own party,” the motion, submitted by the Ashley branch of the Bristol West CLP, said.

“With the May local elections imminent and with Labour ahead in the polls, whatever her intentions, the timing of her actions and obvious negative media attention it generated; coming on the back of a series of unwarranted attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, can only serve to enhance the electoral chances of the Tory Party and damage those of the Labour Party.

“It is the political right that is permeated with the poison of anti-Semitism, and the left wing who have consistently stood in solidarity with Jewish people against persecution and oppression,” it added.

The motion then goes into great detail analysing the claims that Labour either is anti-Semitic or hasn’t done enough to deal with people within the party who are.

It ends by calling on Bristol West CLP to agree that it believes anti-semitic behaviour is unacceptable and should not be tolerated within the Labour Party, but that the ‘alleged outrage’ about Labour’s issue with anti-Semitism is ‘simply an attempt to smear the reputation of the Labour Party leader – and indeed the Labour Party itself.

And it adds by asking members to agree that the “current accusations of antisemitism are a carefully orchestrated attempt to discredit the Labour leadership and indeed the Labour Party just before the local elections.”

The motion sparked a furious response on Twitter. Ms Debbonaire herself tweeted that she found the motion 'sad'.

“To be honest, I have no problem being accountable to my CLP, as well as everyone in Bristol West,” she wrote.

“I am just sad that the thing my own branch wants to single out for explanation is attendance at a rally against antisemitism, Jeremy himself has said Labour MPs were entitled to attend (this) rally,” she added.

The motion proposed from the Ashley branch won’t be the only one to be voted on at what now promises to be another fiery meeting of Bristol West’s Labour Party.

A second motion on the issue has been submitted, by Labour Party member Marley Bennett, who works as an assistant to Kerry McCarthy MP, in the neighbouring Bristol East constituency.

His motion, also lengthy, asked members to agree to note that antisemitism is a problem of the far right more than Labour, that those hostile to Labour have ‘weaponised…allegations into unfair criticisms’, but also that Jeremy Corbyn’s actions in the past ‘can prompt authentic criticism’.

The motion resolves, among other things, to ‘continue campaigning for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Government’, and also to ‘treat allegations of anti-Semitism as seriously as it would any other type of racism, and never to initially dismiss allegations as smears’.

Nationally, the Labour anti-Semitism row has escalated, with the resignation of Christine Shawcroft from the party’s ruling NEC committee, after it emerged she had opposed the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial.

(Image: Jon Kent)

Her place is being taken on the NEC by comedian and actor Eddie Izzard, who was one of only a handful of national figures in the Labour Party to come to Bristol West to help support the re-election of Thangam Debbonaire in the face of a huge campaign by the Green Party to take the seat.

Mr Izzard, who was appointed to the ruling NEC committee because he received the next most votes in the most recent election, said Labour must now rebuild relations with the Jewish community. “Although this isn’t the manner in which I had hoped to join the NEC, I’m honoured to step up and represent Labour members at the heart of our party,” he said.

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“This is a very important time for the Labour Party and we must stamp out completely the stain of anti-Semitism from a minority of members. It has no place in our party.

“I have campaigned against hate my whole life and will continue to do so wherever it rears its ugly head. We must make amends and repair the damage with the Jewish community as Jeremy Corbyn has promised to do. We must get past this, for the good of the people Labour seeks to represent,” he added.

It is not the first time Ms Debbonaire has become embroiled in a row about anti-Semitism. Just days before the 2017, she joined a chorus of disapproval about an unofficial 100ft long banner which attacked Theresa May and supported Jeremy Corbyn.

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Many Labour supporters in Bristol slammed the banner, which was put up in the Bear Pit and later at College Green for a time, because of the Star of David earrings that adorned the image of Theresa May on the banner.

Its maker claimed the banner was not anti-Semitic, and the earrings merely highlighted the Conservative Government’s support of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Bristol West CLP meet on Thursday evening.