Golders Green MP decries ‘lack of vocal solidarity’ from liberal left for Jewish community

There has been a “lack of vocal solidarity” from parts of the liberal left in the face of rising antisemitism against the Jewish community, the Labour MP for Golders Green has said.

Sarah Sackman said the response to antisemitic violence across the UK from parts of the “moderate majority”, including some anti-racist organisations, had been “muted”. Her comments follow a terrorist attack against the Jewish community in her constituency last week.

Essa Suleiman, 45, has been charged with the attempted murders of Shloime Rand, 34, and Moshe Shine, 76, in Golders Green on Wednesday, and of Ishmail Hussein earlier the same day in Southwark.

The stabbings have intensified calls for action on antisemitism, coming within weeks of other incidents in the same area, including an attempted arson attack on a nearby memorial wall and a fire in March that destroyed four Jewish community ambulances. The police are investigating whether these incidents involved criminal proxies acting for Iran.

Sackman, the courts and legal services minister, said there has been an outpouring of support since last week’s knife attack in her constituency, with messages from Christian and Muslim faith leaders, adding the incident had “clearly resonated” with people.

“For a minority community to come under this sort of sustained level of threat and attack purely for our identity, you would expect in the normal run of things for anti-racist organisations, for trade unions, for cultural leaders to speak out,” she told the Times.

“I think what has been notable is, for some time now, a lack of vocal solidarity from the moderate majority. You would expect our anti-racist movement, who quite rightly come out vocally, regularly for other minoritised communities to have responded in kind.”

Last week, she wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian saying Jewish people wanted to go about their daily lives – working, taking their children to school and practising their faith – free from fear. Sackman wrote that she now finds herself gripping her daughters’ hands more tightly, adding that many British Jews feel both exhausted and afraid.