| Page 2 of 2 < |
Mayor of London Suspended 4 Weeks
London Mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from office for likening a Jewish reporter who questioned him to a concentration camp guard.
(Chris Young - AP)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Livingstone: "Actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it because you're paid to, aren't you?"
Livingstone's comments, widely reported in the British media, angered many British Jews. Two weeks later, the mayor made a public statement expressing regret that his remarks may have been seen by Jewish people as downplaying "the horror and magnitude of the Holocaust." He added: "I wish to say to those Londoners that my words were not intended to cause such offense and that my view remains that the Holocaust against the Jews is the greatest racial crime of the 20th century."
But Livingstone steadfastly refused to apologize to Finegold, or to the Evening Standard and its owner, Associated Newspapers, which also owns the Daily Mail. In his statement, Livingstone accused those papers of being "the leading advocate of anti-Semitism in the country for half a century," and said more recently that they had targeted asylum seekers and Muslims.
In his exchange with Finegold, Livingstone condemned the Evening Standard as "a load of scumbags" and "reactionary bigots . . . who supported fascism."
The disciplinary panel concluded that "matters should not have got as far as this."
"But it is the mayor who must take responsibility for this," the ruling said. "It was his comments that started the matter and thereafter his position seems to have become ever more entrenched."
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, a private group that filed the complaint with the disciplinary panel, said in a statement Friday: "Had the Mayor simply recognized the upset his comments had caused, this sorry episode could have been avoided. He has been the architect of his own misfortune."
Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron, who is Jewish and would take over in Livingstone's absence, said in a statement that the decision was "absurd" and that the issue had "been blown out of all proportion."
