Labour won’t run ‘anti-Semitic’ row posters
The Labour Party has decided not to run controversial posters attacking Michael Howard’s economic policy.
The Labour Party said the posters, one of which depicted Mr Howard and Oliver Letwin’s heads pasted onto pigs and another which had Mr Howard swinging a pocket watch on a chain akin to a hypnotist, were anti-conservative not anti-Semitic.
But, since both Mr Howard and his Shadow Chancellor are Jewish, a number of Jewish groups claimed the posters were anti-Semitic and offensive.
Critics pointed out that the pigs are considered unclean in Judaism and the pocket watch image harked back to figures such as corrupt moneylender Shylock in the Merchant of Venice.
The Labour Party said the ad merely suggested Mr Howard was hoodwinking the electorate on tax and spending.
Last night the party said it had removed the posters after it finished canvassing visitors to the website regarding their favourite one.
A party spokesman said: “This has been up on the website for two weeks and there has only been a fuss in the last four days so a substantial number of people voted before there was any fuss.”
Visitors voted for neither poster, instead choosing one featuring Mr Howard and Mr Letwin holding a blackboard reading “2+2=5”, with a caption above saying: “The Tories’ sums don’t add up.”
Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, who is herself Jewish and vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel, said the poster seemingly depicting Mr Howard as Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice or Fagin was unacceptable.
She told Channel4 News: “I thought the other poster very insensitive and I am glad that Labour Party members have had the good sense to vote down the poster that the advertising gurus thought was so clever. It was not.”
The Conservatives, who have deliberately sought to avoid commenting directly on the allegations of anti-Semitism, said the poster campaign was “a big misjudgement by Labour’s campaign team.”
A spokesman added: “Their first shot in the election has badly backfired as people have seen through Labour’s hypocrisy.”
