The sale of T-shirts bearing the Labour Party logo and showing Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell brandishing a Kalashnikov assault rifle was branded ‘tasteless’ last night.
The mocked-up image featuring the weapon popular with terrorists and the slogan ‘Arm John McDonnell Now!’ were worn by activists at a Young Labour rally attended by Jeremy Corbyn last week.
The T-shirts display Labour’s official red rose logo above the words ‘Labour Party Young Guerrillas’ and appear to be based on Mr McDonnell’s controversial comments on Irish terrorism.
Close: John McDonnell meets Sinn Fein chief Gerry Adams in 2008
In 2003 during an event to remember the death of a hunger striker, he called for former IRA members to be ‘honoured’. He later apologised for the remark. Mr McDonnell is close to Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.
The T-shirts are available on British website Redbubble for £14. A wider range of terrorist-style gun-toting ‘John McDonnell’ clothes, including sleeveless shirts, is available on a US website. The items also bear the Labour logo and Labour Party Young Guerrillas brand.
Labour Party Young Guerrillas has a Facebook site featuring genuine iconic photographs of terrorists stretching back decades, with Labour politicians and slogans superimposed on them.
One shows MP Hilary Benn, a leading critic of Mr Corbyn, and Lord Falconer, a close ally of Tony Blair, tied up and being led to execution. A caption refers to the ‘disgusting betrayal of the Rightists’.
Other posters show guerrillas marching on the House of Commons and Mr McDonnell as a Chinese Red Army revolutionary.
‘Tasteless’: The T-shirt featuring John McDonnell with a Kalashnikov
Mr Corbyn and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott appear in other images.
A rally of Maoist guerrillas is shown with a slogan on the banners changed to Momentum, the controversial Left-wing group behind Mr Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign.
The Labour Party Young Guerrillas Facebook page declares: ‘We have one demand: Arm John McDonnell Now!’ It is not known who runs the page.
Tory MP Philip Davies said last night: ‘These T-shirts are tasteless and an insult to the memory of those killed by the IRA and are symbolic of what the Labour Party has become.
‘It’s no wonder their activists eulogise John McDonnell after his previous support for the IRA.’
The Conservatives faced similar outrage in the 1980s when Right-wing activists in the Federation of Conservative Students reportedly wore T-shirts with the slogan ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’. The group was later banned.
A spokesman for Mr McDonnell said he had ‘nothing to do with these T-shirts. He does not approve of violence or glamorising it’.
A Labour spokesman said the T-shirts were also ‘nothing to do with the party’.
Young Labour, the organisation for party members aged 14 to 26, has rejected a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine, and called for banks to come under public ownership.