Antisemitism campaigners have reacted with fury after Pro-Palestine activists called for the cancellation of a performance by Jewish actress Dame Maureen Lipman – in a poster depicting her as the devil.
Dame Maureen is due to star in Allegra by Olivier and Tony Award-nominated playwright Peter Quilter at His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen from May 26-30.
But in an Instagram post, in which Dame Maureen is adorned with red devil horns and is holding a black trident, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) Aberdeen called on organisers to cancel her appearance.
‘Aberdeen Performing Arts publicly promotes values of equality, inclusion and community cohesion — values we believe are incompatible with platforming anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia,’ the accompanying caption says.
‘We’re calling on APA to reconsider hosting Maureen Lipman in Allegra this May in light of her long record of harmful statements about Muslims, Palestinians and Palestinian rights.’
SPSC Aberdeen added: ‘No racists welcome here!!!’
Antisemitism campaigners said the poster utilises an enduring anti-Jewish trope of associating Jews with Satan.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: ‘Beyond the likely copyright infringement and defamation here, portraying a Jew with devil’s horns is a longstanding antisemitic trope.
Dame Maureen is adorned with red devil horns and pictured holding a black trident in an Inatsgram post by Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) Aberdeen
The Instagram post calls for Aberdeen Performing Arts to cancel Dame Maureen’s appearance at the end of May
Activists hold a pro-Palestine banner at the March Against the Far Right at Hyde Park on March 28, 2026
‘It is shameful, but these sorts of Jew-baiting agitators are far past feeling shame at their actions.
‘Discrimination against Jewish people has become normalised in the arts: it’s now simply part of doing business as a Jewish creative in modern Britain.
‘The only consolation is that Maureen Lipman knows that she enjoys the support of the Jewish community and is beloved across the country, regardless of what vocal Jew-baiting activists might say.’
The call to cancel the performance comes the same week that Dame Maureen described modern-day Britain as ‘like 1933’ following a spate of antisemitic attacks including this week’s double-stabbing in Golders Green and an assault on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester last October.
Essa Suleiman, 45, appeared in court on Friday accused of attacking Shloime Rand, 34, and Moshe Shine, 76, two days prior.
‘This is 1933,’ the Educating Rita and Coronation Street star told LBC Radio.
Dame Maureen called for a ban on pro-Palestine marches which she claims has enabled a ‘benign hatred’ against the capital’s Jewish population.
‘It is time to stop this benign hatred in the form of political dissent on our streets every Saturday. There is a Race Relations Bill and it is being violated every week.’
Dame Maureen claimed earlier this week that Britain was ‘like Nazi Germany in the 1930s’ due to a spate of attacks against Jews
Antisemitism campaigners called the pressure to cancel Dame Maureen’s performance a ‘campaign of intimidation’ to cancel the show through ‘organised pressure’.
However, SPSC Aberdeen accused the actress of being ‘an open supporter of the settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel’ and said she had ‘voiced extremist Islamophobic anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab views’ in the past.
In July 2006, during a debate on the BBC2 programme, Lipman said: ‘Human life is not cheap to the Israelis, and human life on the other side is quite cheap actually, because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up.’
SPSC Aberdeen also pointed to her rejection of Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homeland and her 2016 remark about UN resolutions passed against Israel.
‘This is all voted against by people who don’t allow women to drive and make them cover their heads with black bags,’ she said.
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) Aberdeen have been contacted for comment.
