A SENIOR backbench MP has called for activists to take part in a Twitterstorm tomorrow evening backing Labour’s anti-semitism code.

The campaign supports Labour’s national executive committee (NEC’s) adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, but with guidance to accompany the IHRA’s examples of anti-semitism, which Labour says is intended to prevent political criticism of Israel being conflated with anti-Jewish prejudice.

The Twitterstorm – backed by groups including Jewish Voice for Labour and the Jewish Socialist Group – calls on supporters of the NEC position to support the #backthecode campaign on Twitter and Facebook from 7pm tomorrow.

Derby North MP Chris Williamson told the Star that those calling for Labour to adopt the IHRA definition plus examples that could hamper criticism of the Israeli government’s policies, had done so out of “political expediency” and warned that it would “not help to quell the storm of attacks.

“I think it is a naive ambition — in my opinion, it will then be used to mount further attacks against Jeremy [Corbyn] and people who have spoken up in support of the Palestinian people and that’s a real worry.”

He warned that a wholesale adoption of the IHRA’s examples risked stifling debate and could lead to a form of “McCarthyism” gripping the Labour Party.

Kenneth Stern, who originally drafted the IHRA definition, gave evidence to the US Congress last year saying it had been used in exactly that way.

“An ‘Israel apartheid week’ was cancelled as violating the definition. A Holocaust survivor was required to change the title of a campus talk, and the university [Manchester] mandated it be recorded after an Israeli diplomat complained that the title violated the definition,” Mr Stern warned US lawmakers.

Mr Williamson said he wanted to see Labour “make an unambiguous statement of our opposition to anti-semitism, which is clearly important given some of the accusations which have been flying around, notwithstanding Labour’s very proud record of standing against all forms of racism.”

But he said it was also crucial to “make sure that it doesn’t preclude or make more difficult the ability to criticise Netanyahu’s apartheid regime.”

“It is pretty obvious to me that, in my opinion, adopting the IHRA examples in their entirety would be a retrograde step,” Mr Williamson said.

“Nothing will placate the people who are launching these attacks, nothing.”

The MP for Derby North said: “I want to stand up for the Palestinian people, I want to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Israelis who actually share that view.

“When these people claim that the Board of Deputies for example, or the so-called Jewish Leadership Council, which is self-appointed, are speaking for the entire of the Jewish community, that’s completely wrong.

“A lot of people in the Jewish community are sick to the back teeth of this and really feel their voices are not being heard sufficiently.”

Mr Williamson added: “I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with anti-racist campaigners. We were literally fighting [racists] on the street in the 1970s and it is repugnant, it’s incredibly offensive to find yourself being accused of this sort of bigotry.

“There’s not a bigoted bone in my bloody body!”