Three Labour councillors, Allan Barclay, Marilyn Davies and Jason Fojtik, have resigned from the Labour Party over anti-Semitism.

Mr Barclay, the Mayor of Hartlepool, said he resigned as the party had become a party of anti-Semites, racists and homophobes.

In a resignation letter to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, deputy leader Tom Watson and General Secretary Jennie Formby, he called on Corbyn to resign and Corbynites to be removed from the Party.

“This is the only way that the party can become respectable again,” he noted.

A Labour Party spokesperson said the party rejected Mr Barclay’s position.

Ms Davies, Labour and Co-op councillor in Freeland and Hanborough in Oxfordshire, was reportedly angered after a video featuring former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown making a speech opposing anti-Semitism was deleted from the closed Witney Labour Facebook group.

She told the Oxford Mail, “I have come to the conclusion to stay in the party would make me complicit in the anti-Semitism and climate of hate and fear now generated across CLPs.”

Ms Davies added: “The Labour Party is now institutionally anti-Semitic. It is not just those who generate it who are to blame but those that stand by silent while they do. I can no longer be silent. I will be louder.”

Mr Fojtik, Labour town and district councillor for Clopton Ward in Stratford-upon-Avon, released a statement on social media, noting, “For months the Labour Party failed to act before finally being shamed into accepting the definition (International Definition of Antisemitism), but little has changed.”

He added, “I have come to the conclusion that a Party that has always been proud of its anti-racism, has become institutionally anti-Semitic under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Ignoring this deplorable behaviour by our supporters is tantamount to tacit endorsement.”

Mr Fojtik is to stand as an independent in upcoming local elections.

Campaign Against Antisemitism commended the trio for taking a principled stand against anti-Semitism.

By Howard Lawrence