After working in public relations roles for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre and Nestlé, Smeeth became more actively involved in the Labour Party. She stood as an MP candidate in the 2010 election but was not elected. She was named as an intelligence source to "strictly protect" by the US embassy in London in a 2009 diplomatic cable published online in 2011. During her parliamentary career she campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union. She served as Personal Private Secretary to Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, but resigned so she could vote against a second Brexit referendum. She was elected Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement in April 2019 and served until she lost the contest for the Stoke constituency in 2019.
Early life
Smeeth was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her mother is from east London, and her father is a Scottish trade unionist.[2] Her maternal family is Jewish, and arrived in London during the 1890s, having escaped Russian pogroms.[2] However, she had no contact with her father after her parents divorced when she was aged three.[3]
Smeeth attended school and taught at a Jewish school in Bristol, where her mother was later deputy general secretary for Amicus,[2][4] and in her early life travelled extensively across the UK due to her mother's work.[5]
Smeeth graduated with a degree in Politics and International Relations from the University of Birmingham in 2000.[5] She worked as a policy and research officer for a trade union[5] before working in a public relations role from January 2004 to September 2005 at Sodexo. She then became director of public affairs and campaigns at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) in November 2005,[6] leaving in early 2007 to work in PR for Nestlé.[7][8]
Smeeth was named in a 2009 cable from the US embassy in London as a source to "strictly protect". According to the cable Smeeth had supplied intelligence about Prime Minister Gordon Brown's intention to call an election in late 2009, and his subsequent decision against doing so at that time.[12]
Smeeth campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union in the approach to the 2016 referendum.[18] Her constituency voted for Brexit by 72.1%. In November 2016, Smeeth said "I'll be voting for us to move to Article 50. The general public, especially in Stoke-on-Trent, sent a very clear message with some parts of my constituency voting 80/20 to leave. My whole priority and focus is how we can make it work".[19]
In June 2016, at the launch of the Chakrabarti Report, Marc Wadsworth, a Labour Party activist, described Smeeth as working "hand-in-hand" with Kate McCann of The Daily Telegraph, after McCann passed Smeeth his press release.[20][21][22] Smeeth later issued a statement that Wadsworth was using "traditional antisemitic slurs to attack me for being part of a 'media conspiracy'" and criticised a lack of response from Corbyn or his office, calling on him to resign.[23][24]
However, according to a video recording of the event,[20] Wadsworth did not mention a general "media conspiracy", or refer to Jews. Wadsworth said he was unaware Smeeth was Jewish, and that "I've never been called anti-semitic in my life...The Jewish people have an ally in me."[20]
Smeeth said that she received 25,000 pieces of abuse during July and August, including 20,000 in the 12-hour period immediately following the incident.[25][26] However, the Jewish Voice for Labour group contested this,[27] by comparing Smeeth's claim with a study by the Community Service Trust, who monitor anti-Semitic and abusive media content.[28] The study found that over an entire year (encompassing the 12-hour period of Smeeth's claim of 20,000 cases) only 9,008 original tweets concerning Jews were classified as antagonistic. Other studies investigating the most abused MPs on Twitter found that Smeeth was not mentioned, since she did not exceed the threshold of abuse to be ranked.[29][30] In July 2020, Wadsworth referred to Smeeth as a "pro-Israeli government zealot".[31]
The police strengthened her security after she received a death threat.[32][33] In April 2018, Smeeth was accompanied by around 40 Labour MPs and peers to a Labour hearing into Wadsworth's conduct.[34] Wadsworth was expelled for bringing the Party into disrepute.[35]
In the December 2019 general election, Smeeth lost her seat to Conservative Jonathan Gullis, who overturned her 2,359, or five per cent, majority to a 15% or 6,286 majority of his own.
Smeeth was married to Michael Smeeth, a business executive and the UK chair of the British-American Project. She describes herself as 'culturally Jewish'.[42] Since 2015, she has been a board member of Hope not Hate.[43]
In June 2020, she became chief executive of Index on Censorship, an organisation which campaigns for freedom of speech.[44][45]
^Smeeth, Ruth (8 March 2016). "We owe it to women to win". LabourList. Retrieved 12 November 2023. A single parent raising her daughter in a council flat, she worked her way up through the ranks of the trade union movement, eventually rising to become the Deputy General Secretary of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union (MSF), and then Amicus.
^ abcd"About Me". ruthsmeeth.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 3 March 2015.
