Members of the Labour Party in Newham, East London, have issued the following appeal for their parties to be reinstated.
AN URGENT APPEAL TO JEREMY CORBYN, THE SOCIALIST CAMPAIGN GROUP, AND THEIR SUPPORTERS IN THE LABOUR PARTY AND TRADE UNIONS
From members of the suspended Constituency Labour Parties of Newham
Jeremy and comrades!
1. We make this appeal from the growing ranks of Labour Party members up and down the country who have been suspended or expelled by the current party leadership for our support for Jeremy and for the Palestinian people. Our numbers have already swelled to hundreds, possibly thousands, and include the chairs or officers of at least 70 CLPs whose only crime has been to allow motions calling for Jeremy’s full reinstatement within the party.
2. This dictatorial effort to silence us is not only unconstitutional but unlawful. It violates fundamental rights to freedom of expression, as is shown by the subsequent lifting of some suspensions under threat of legal action. But these anti-democratic practices continue unabated, their victims’ voices ignored, with the use of gagging orders and threats instead of argument across the democratic bodies of our party. In short, we are the victims of a coup within the party whose aim is the purging of Jeremy Corbyn and all those who support him, along with the radical political vision the party embraced under his leadership, including support for the Palestinian cause.
3. This purge by Keir Starmer threatens to destroy the Labour Party as a democratic political organization.
4. There could be no clearer evidence of the disastrous consequences of Labour’s current course than its miserable performance in the recent elections. For instance, in the 2017 general election, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour had won 22,000 votes in Hartlepool, and 52% of the vote. In the 2021 by-election, under Starmer, Labour won 8,500 votes and 29% of the vote. Yet somehow the collapse of Labour’s vote is misrepresented as evidence of Corbyn’s failure.
5. The current Labour leadership has failed catastrophically to challenge the management of the Covid crisis by the present Conservative administration. In failing to mobilise the party and wider labour movement against the Tories, it has been complicit in the avoidable deaths of many of the nearly 130,000 people who have died. It has also enabled rampant government corruption, further attacks on the NHS and public sector, and the impoverishment of many millions of ordinary people. This inaction has turned the party’s half a million members into helpless bystanders and the party itself into an irrelevance at a time of the worst social crisis in Britain since the Second World War. The political stakes could not be higher.
6. We are therefore appealing to you to take decisive action to stop the ongoing purge and to restore the party to its members as a functioning democratic organization which can rise to the challenge of the crisis caused by Tory misrule.
7. To Jeremy personally we say: we have been loyal and committed Labour Party members over many years. Your inspiring achievement in transforming the party into a mass movement of hope for a better future can never be forgotten. We supported you in your hour of need and have been unfairly punished by the party leadership for our principled stand. But we now need you to support us in return. We appeal to you to clearly speak out in our support and do all you can to rally the membership against the undemocratic actions of the party leadership.
8. To the supporters and allies of Jeremy we say: we know you are opposed to the measures that have been taken against us and have spoken out in support of Jeremy’s political vision. But this has not been enough to reverse the ruthless progress of the Starmer leadership’s purge. It is therefore time for you to live up to your political responsibilities, at whatever cost, and to put yourselves at the head of the growing rebellion against the party leadership.
We are therefore calling on you to:
1. Publicly denounce the purge taking place within the party, affirm your support for victimised members and CLPs and call for the immediate reversal of all unconstitutional disciplinary actions, including the removal of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn;
2. Call for the resignation of Keir Starmer and initiate a new leadership contest;
3. Work openly with your allies in the Labour Party and trade unions to organise a special rank-and-file Labour Party conference, to include all those unjustly suspended and expelled, with the aim of mobilising the party against the purge and agreeing a programme to take back the party from Starmer’s failed and authoritarian leadership.
Comradely yours,
