Jeremy Corbyn forced to deny backing Labour MPs plan to send black Brits to Africa and Caribbean

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JEREMY Corbyn has been forced to deny supporting a fellow Labour MP’s plan to offer grants to black Brits to resettle in Africa and the Caribbean.

The party leader is reported to have backed the 1993 proposal by Bernie Grant – which drew fierce criticism from campaigners at the time.

Jeremy Corbyn forced to deny that he ever supported a plan to ‘send black Brits to Africa’

He was named in a story in the left-wing Observer newspaper as one of two other London MPs in favour of the initiative.

But a Labour Party spokesman said on Sunday night: “Jeremy does not and did not support this policy.”

Mr Grant, who was elected as one of the UK’s first black MPs in Tottenham in 1987, said the proposal was a response to widespread racism.

He said: “I accept that there will be some people who will want to stay and fight. Good luck to them.

“I’ll stay and fight with them. I’m not recommending that anybody should go.

“What I’m saying is that those who want to should have the option of leaving with government assistance.”

Mr Grant estimated at the time that as many as 40 per cent of the black people in his constituency would want to leave.

The 1993 proposal by Labour MP Bernie Grant drew fierce criticism at the time
The current Labour leader and Labour MP for Islington pictured in 1993