The Labour Party has said it is taking “incredibly seriously” an interview by Diane Abbott in which she stood by comments she made about racism that led to a year-long suspension from the Labour Party.
The veteran Labour MP was asked about a letter she sent to the Observer in April 2023 in which she suggested people of colour experienced racism in a different way to Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers.
She withdrew her comments at the time and apologised but was suspended from the party and only re-admitted just before last year’s general election.
Asked by the BBC’s James Naughtie if she looked back on the incident with regret, she said: “No, not at all.”
She added: “Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know.
“You don’t know unless you stop to speak to them or you’re in a meeting with them.
“But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they’re black. They are different types of racism.”
Asked if she believed she had done anything wrong or had said something in her Observer letter that she did not believe in, she said: “I just think that it’s silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism.
“I just… I don’t know why people would say that.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “There is no place for antisemitism in the Labour Party. We take these comments incredibly seriously, and will assess them in line with Labour Party’s rules and procedures.”
Baroness Shami Chakrabarti – a Labour peer and a friend of Abbott – told BBC’s Politics Live she did not interpret the interview as the MP retracting her previous apology.
“She was saying, as I understand it… that people do experience racism differently – that doesn’t create a hierarchy, that doesn’t mean one kind racism is better than another,” she said.
“I think people who are writing ‘island of strangers’ speeches should be a bit slow to sit in judgement on Diane Abbott who has been fighting racism all her life,” she added in a reference to comments made by Keir Starmer last month.
Another Labour peer Lord John Mann – who co-produced a report into antisemitism this week – said: “When her [Abbott’s] constituents are attacked on the street because they are Jewish, it is anti-Jewish racism… they know what it is because they’re experiencing it day-in, day-out.”
In a wide-ranging interview for his Reflections programme, which was recorded in May, Naughtie asked the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP if she would condemn antisemitic behaviour in the same way she would racist behaviour against someone because of the colour of the skin.
She replied: “Well of course, and I do get a bit weary of people trying to pin the antisemitic label on me because I’ve spent a lifetime fighting racism of all kinds and in particular fighting antisemitism, partly because of the nature of my constituency.”
The exchanges came as Abbott discussed her life and career in politics, including her own experiences of racism, as Britain’s first black woman MP and her years of campaigning with other radical left wingers including Jeremy Corbyn.
She entered Parliament in 1987 and is now the Mother of the House, the honorary title given to the longest-serving female MP.
In her 2023 letter to the Observer, Abbott wrote that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people “undoubtedly experience prejudice” that is “similar to racism”.
She added: “It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism.”
Abbott was quick to withdraw the remarks, which were heavily criticised by Jewish and Traveller groups, and apologised “for any anguish caused”.
But she was suspended by the Labour Party pending the outcome of an investigation, with leader Sir Keir Starmer saying her letter “was antisemitic” and should be condemned.
Abbott was readmitted to the Labour Party in May 2024, just in time for her stand as a Labour candidate in the general election, even though an internal inquiry into her conduct had concluded four months earlier.
The former shadow home secretary was given a “formal warning” for engaging in conduct that was in the opinion of Labour’s National Executive Committee “prejudicial and grossly detrimental to the Labour Party”. She also completed an online antismetism awareness course.
Asked by Naughtie if she had been “hung out to dry” by the Labour leadership, who had continued to say she was subject to a disciplinary process after it had finished, she said: “In the end, Keir Starmer had to restore the whip to me.
“I got tremendous support locally. We had a big rally on the steps of Hackney Town Hall. And in the end Keir Starmer and the people around him had to back off because of the support I had from the community.”
She said she was sure that the Labour leadership had been “trying to get me out” and there were “hints” that she would be offered a seat in the House of Lords if she stepped down as an MP.
“I was never going to that. And I’m a Labour MP today, and I’m grateful,” she said.
Reflections is on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 17 July at 09:30 BST.
