BRITISH LABOUR PARTY GOES ANTI-SEMITIC

Fagin, Shylock and Blair by William Rees-Mogg
THERE are two great anti-Semitic personas in English literature. Both were created by men of genius, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, in works of genius, The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist. Both portray a stereotypical Jew as avaricious, ruthless and cunning. The names of both of these characters are so familiar that they have entered the language. They are Shylock and Fagin.

Yesterday, The Mail on Sunday rightly published two striking photographs side by side. Both are carefully staged, with a Fagin figure holding an old-fashioned pocket watch on a chain. The first is a picture of Barry Humphries actually playing Fagin. The second is a Labour Party poster of Michael Howard [ED. THE JEWISH TORY LEADER], carefully chosen to fit the Fagin image.

The second picture has, of course, been doctored by Labour. The watch and chain have been added. The relationship between the two poses is obviously intentional; there is even an unusual knot in the watch chain that appears in both. We are intended to associate Mr Howard with Fagin, that is with a sinister Jewish criminal as seen by anti-Semites.

This is part of the Labour pre-election campaign. Another Labour Party poster, to be seen on the Labour website, shows Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin [ED. ALSO JEWISH] as two flying pigs. Recently Mike O’Brien, the Trade Minister, wrote an article for a Muslim newspaper that questioned whether Mr Howard could be trusted to support Muslims. Last year Ian McCartney, the chairman of the Labour Party, compared Mr Letwin to Fagin.