Labour yesterday withdrew two election posters depicting Michael Howard as a "Fagin" figure and a flying pig after MPs and Jewish groups said they left the party open to charges of anti-Semitism. A spokesman said the posters would not be used and conceded that lessons would be learned. But the party refused to issue a formal apology and insisted that the posters were not anti-Semitic. It was clear, however, that the leadership realised it had blundered. The poster that caused most offence showed Mr Howard swinging a pocket watch on a chain and saying: "I can spend the same money twice." Critics said it had echoes of Dickens's Jewish pickpocket, Fagin, or Shylock from The Merchant of Venice. Another poster depicted Mr Howard and Mr Letwin, both of whom are of Jewish descent, as flying pigs with the same message about Tory sums not adding up. Jews regard pigs as unclean.
Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, who is Jewish and a vice-chairman of the Labour Friends of Israel, said the poster showing Mr Howard looking like a Shylock or Fagin figure was unacceptable. "I think it is very insensitive," she said. "I do not think it is deliberately anti-Semitic but we should not have such posters." Harry Cohen, another Jewish Labour MP, said he did not believe there was any intended anti-Semitism but that those responsible had not thought hard enough that they might cause offence. Fraser Kemp, Labour's deputy campaign co-ordinator, said Mr Howard was a link with economic failures of the past and that Labour had a right to highlight his record. Denying charges of anti-Semitism, he said the use of the fob watch was intended to show that the Tories would hypnotise people into thinking they would create a better economy, when the reverse would be the case. |