The Labour Party is bent on destroying itself
JVL Introduction
Skwawkbox carries this story on the eve of Labour Party Conference.
Stephen Smith is a lifelong and active anti racist, a socialist most of his adult life, NASUWT’s Principal Officer for Equality for 7 years – and Wantage CLP Policy Officer, Executive Committee member and Conference delegate.
Or rather, was.
He has just received an administrative suspension 3 days before Conference.
He has responded with outrage in a letter to Keir Starmer, taking great exception to the insinuation that he is in any way a racist or an antisemite.
For him it is the final straw in an ongoing pricess of disillusionment since Starmer was elected Party leader
Read more below.
This article was originally published by Skwawkbox on Fri 24 Sep 2021. Read the original here.
Councillor and delegate’s blistering resignation letter lists Starmer’s crimes against Labour, democracy and the people
‘I at least expected the most basic standards of honesty and integrity. How naive… You can’t even lie competently… How f***ing dare you?!’ Councillor resigns membership and all party offices and tells Keir Starmer he is putting ‘insatiable factionalism’ above the needs of the country
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Thank you Stephen Smith…… for your courage and for setting out with such passion the moral and political corruption which has engulfed the Labour Party.
I am delighted that JVL has published your letter. You have drawn up a formidable indictment of a man who has, by his actions over the last 18 months, shown that he is not only politically inept but that he epitomises why the public at large has such utter contempt for politicians: a person who will say whatever he thinks will serve his personal political interests.
Keir Starmer has shown himself to be a racist – both by his persecution of Jewish members who are socialists and by his failure to stand up for the rights of British Muslims. His ignorance of – or contempt for – the democratic process means that he poses a threat to the future of the Labour Party.
Let us hope that the trade union representatives and constituency delegates in Brighton this weekend show the same courage as Stephen Smith
I wonder how many delegates are going to find at the Registration desk that they have been sent a letter or email suspending them [that hadn’t arrived before they left to attend Conference]? Watch some space, or other?
You’re best out of this ROTTEN repugnant party, I left in 1996 after 20 years. I knew then that it was travelling rapidly to the right but I never expected it to have a leader who openly supports Zionism, apartheid and racism!
The Labour Party is finished and I can’t see any way back to anything resembling a Socialist Party, it’s been packed with right wing MPs and indeed members for decades. How the Trade Union Movement has allowed this to happen is a complete mystery and I can only come to the conclusion that they’re happy with the situation. Best wishes for the future.
Starmer must be a traitor to the cause, a man whose allegiance is undoubtedly for the enemy’s of Socialism.
Starmer is indeed a vile all-round disgrace. Thank you, Stephen and JVL, for listing the multiple examples of Sir Keir’s evil, much of which I was aware of.
One of my CLP’s Conference Delegates, chosen by us at a proper meeting, has just been removed by the dictate of Starmer’s creeps for no reason other than to stop her speaking or voting at the Labour Party Conference.
Stephen Smith’s excellent letter detailing Starmer’s crimes against the Labour Party, its members and the UK should be printed off and a copy handed out to every delegate and visitor to the Labour Party Conference.
I wish that I had Stephen’s way with words.
But – What could I add to his conclusions !!
The question is where do we go?
Now, that was an essay worth reading.
Thank you, Stephen Smith.
Solidarity!
Yet still, the majority of the electorate appear completely unaware that this McCarthyism it’s going on at all. It’s not being reported upon by the BBC, Channel 4, Guardian (ha ha) or any of the obvious ‘news’ outlets.
I think that the suppression of the Forde Report might once, before the BBC was filleted, have squeaked onto the news. Now, every day, it is possible to read, on any non-corporate news site, about yet more and grander scale dictatorial manoeuvring on the parts of Starmer and Evans. The current cabal are dangerous and quite evil but it’s the MSM that greases the wheels.
Are there any plans to stage a pro-democracy demo outside the conference?
The TRUTH, the WHOLE TRUTH, and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. A magnificent piece by a colleague in the NASUWT. I am proud of you!
Sorry Stephen
But this was not a time for a completely futile gesture, I care not a jot how you feel, it will have slightly less than zero effect and is precisely what they want you to do
This is why the Left are their own worst enemy, if you were serious you would have at least waited until after conference and then we all could have coordinated our response to maximum effect
No matter, it is what it is now
From what I’m reading the fight back has started, let’s hope it’s decisive
Regards comrade
See you when we get our party back
Martin Kilkie, that is indeed the question. The way I see it, Stephen Smith and others in his position have 3 choices:
1) Join the Green Party. A lot of ex-Labour people do this and it’s probably true to say that Labour (under Starmer) is a lot further away from the concerns and ideals of left-wingers than the Green Party. Not something you could have said about Labour under Corbyn, but that’s where we are.
2) Serve as an Independent for the rest of his term and then maybe stand as one.
3) Retire from politics, either after serving the remainder his term as an Independent or straight away
I think we can all agree that none of these are satisfactory. The Green Party, whilst perhaps closer to his ideals than Starmer’s Labour, is nevertheless not a Socialist Party by any stretch of the imagination. Independents tend to be right wing and he isn’t. And I’m guessing he doesn’t want to retire from politics.
But the sane alternative – stand as a Socialist, maybe with other people in the same situation – is impossible under FPTP. As a councillor, it might be just possible to get elected as a non-major party candidate, though it’s still horrendously difficult (even for the Green Party, were he to choose option 1). But anything higher than a local council is impossible under FPTP.
Make no mistake, FPTP drives this purge. It’s only possible to harry people like this if they have nowhere else to go. Which, under FPTP, is true.
Thank you for existing and doing what you do.
Another excellent resignation letter. What is so frustrating and seriously annoying is, that it has to be written in the first place. Picking out just one undemocratic and corrupt action by Starmer and Evans was to wait to see who were chosen as delegates (almost certainly with a ready made list of Left members) then suspending them, giving Starmer and the Right an advantage at every vote and as I write these comments, they’ve voted to keep Evans as the General Secretary.
The only thing that has a remote chance of turning things around is a Leadership challenge.
Is this resignation letter allowed to be shared?
JVL web: we’ve just done so! Help yourself!
Governments lose GE’s through apathy, their base stay at home
The stench from the Tory party will only get worse each day, it will be matched by Red Tories in Labour
Which means a third force could easily take advantage of winner takes all under FPTP
A reverse takeover of Green party would be one way of shifting the balance of power
Thanks, Stephen Smith, for revealing the depths to which the leadership of the party I’ve been a member of for 50+ years has sunk in its desperate bid to regain power by eliminating real socialists like yourself ! Messrs Starmer and Evans are obviously terrified of you.
But even I, a modestly active member of my CLP for the last 40 years, received one of Mr Evans’ menacing notes last year from his Kafkaesque- sounding “Governance and Legal Unit”. Why? Because I’d been informed on – anonymously – by a couple of members of my CLP with whom I have extremely lttle in common for supposedly breaking Party rules.
Anybody who hasn’t received one of these spiteful vehicles of Stasi-type menace should apply to Mr Evans for an example. (NB. The G&LU say they will always be glad to take and ‘honour’ the anonymous ‘evidence’ they are sent…)
I was exculpated from the flimsy charge against me the very day the G&LU received the letter from my solicitors. I’m proud to be an associate (non-Jewish) member of JVL, who offered to defend me.
PS. I strongly recommend watching Ken Loach’s current broadside against Starmer and his ilk on Youtube.
So many contributors to this and many other WhatsApp discussions offer answers to the key question: what is to be done? We need to set up a new party; we should join the Greens; we should stay and fight for Labour Party democracy and justice; we should crowdfund legal challenges to the Party.
Ken Loach, in his passionate condemnation of Starmer/Evans and the press and BBC, argues wisely that any attempt to launch a new party would be at this stage suicidal. Labour is so corrupt and its right wing so ruthless, resourced and connected to the neoliberal establishment that of course we need, he says, a new party; but not now, not without the unions, and not without a careful process of dealing with our own left factionalism. In the current stage we need to develop a mass organisation that clearly aims to link the left inside and outside the Labour Party, to learn how to work together on the key issues, to build support and collaboration with the unions, to look away from obsessive parliamentarianism to the creative efforts of local communities, and particularly the movement for ecosocialism.
Ken Loach is on the same page as Tony Greenstein, who put a similar proposal to Labour Against the Witchhunt. The fact that it was narrowly voted down shows the size of the task ahead and not that the vision is wrong.
I understand that Leah Levine, joint chair of JVL, has been expelled overnight and that the police (!) were called in to make sure that she did not attend the party conference. One abuse after another – Starmer and those around him have no shame. And to involve the police as well, as if they were the proper authority to enforce an internal matter of Labour Party discipline!. No doubt they also furnished her with the telephone number of the Samaritans,
Hard to know how to react to any of this. Stephen Smith’s resignation letter is a passionate and just response, but it won’t cut any ice with its recipients. Will the traditional media – the BBC, the Guardian, etc, – report what is going on? I doubt it.
What a shame Stephen has left the party! The Labour Party needs people like him NOW, MORE THAN EVER!
Doug, I think that 2015 and 2019 show between them that if any “third force” takes advantage of the disarray in both the Tories and Labour to edge a victory using FPTP, it’ll be UKIP (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days). After all, they nearly did so in 2015 – they had their first MP elected and looked to be on the verge of an SNP-in-Scotland moment, where they would suddenly sweep loads of seats, at the expense of the Tories. The Tories were certainly worried about this and it was the main reason they held the Brexit referendum and, upon losing it, adopted most of UKIP’s policies, becoming “UKIP-lite” and expelling those members and MPs who disagreed.
But note that in the middle of all this, in 2019, when it looked possible that Corbyn’s Labour party might win at least a coalition, the Brexit party formed an electoral alliance with the Tories which, probably more than anything else, sealed their victory. A disunited Left will always lose to a united Right under FPTP. And the Right will always unify when presented with a credible threat. Unlike the Left.
So, I’m not hopeful about a new, left wing third force sweeping the board, using FPTP against itself, so to speak. Like I say, if any third force does that it’ll likely be UKIP. Note that both UKIP and the SNP spent decades, literally generations, getting to the point where they were in a position to do this. As did Labour, way back when, for that matter. FPTP retards change quite effectively.
With due respect to the writer of this article, Starmer and his parasites couldn’t give a monkey’s, they seem to have all the levers of power in the party. The left have gone from having a prime minister to getting kicked out of their own conference. Labour is dead as a means of improving working peoples’ lives, it will never be elected to power in the foreseeable future which suits Starmer and his parasites as they enjoy the gravy train.
Stephen Flaherty, I agree mostly with what you said above but would point out that the SNP were once called “the tartan Tory’s”. When Blair moved labour to the right he made space for a left of centre party. Alex Salmond, call him what you will, saw the open goal and the Scottish Labour Party vote collapsed as voters moved to them. Labour relied on a lot of seats in Scotland, they are gone, I think for good and there is no way will labour make up for their loss by getting more English seats. Labour is dead.
Stephen Flaherty
JC created a Munchian scream in this country by creating clear Red Water for the country and party, they finally had a choice
99.9% of new parties dont last 5 minutes, unless its a single issue election
Now either we get our party back or we all jump en masse, unions, members and supporters and merge with the Greens, under FPTP its a winner takes all system, you split Labour, Tory, Brexit and SNP votes
Regards
Doug, you seem to be making my point for me. As you say, under FPTP it’s a winner take all system and a divided party—or a divided wing of the electorate (the Left, Progressives, whatever you want to call them) will lose.
I think it’s reasonably clear that there’s not quite enough support for a left wing party to win an election under FPTP. Hence the need for “Broad Church” parties, like Labour and the Tories (and the LibDems, to some extent). We can’t win an election on our own, hence the need to form a party with people who call themselves Centrists. However, they have decided that, as Mandleson said twenty years ago, that they can harry us because left wing people have “nowhere to go”. It’s quite likely that this will lose them the next election and the one after, but they obviously don’t care about that.
Under FPTP, our responses are limited. Splitting the party will either see us go the way of Respect and all the other parties that have tried this before or it will guarantee a Tory victory as the Progressive vote is further split.
Your Green Party idea is interesting but flawed. Firstly, the Green Party would likely not be too amenable to this – they do have a Radical wing, true, but they have Centrists of their own. But, perhaps more importantly, it’d have to be more-or-less unanimous – anything else would just be splitting the party which, under FPTP, would doom us to Tory rule for decades.
I can’t see it being unanimous, or even close. Even after the Bakers’ Union decision.
Understand, this is of personal interest to me. After Leah Levane’s expulsion and various other happenings at Conference, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay in the party any longer. It’s reached the point where I can’t justify it to myself any more (It didn’t help that the PR motion—you might have noticed that I’m interested in PR—was also voted down). But, as Mandleson said, I have nowhere else to go.