A letter of resignation from Starmer’s CLP
JVL Introduction
We repost a letter of resignation from the Labour Party by a local activist in the Holborn & St Pancras constituency.
It expresses well a general feeling shared by so many in the Party who were roused by the belief that change was possible and devoted large parts of their lives to helping bring it about.
It as a feeling that Keir Starmer claimed to embody in his 10 Pledges when campaigning to be Party leader, pledges to be shredded like confetti in the months and years since.
Labour’s programme has largely been reduced to a statement that “we are not the Tories” and the hope that antipathy to the governing regime will sweep Labour to power.
Maybe it will, but to what end?
Harriet Evans writes
Dear Governance and Legal Unit
On April 12, 2022, I received a wrongly dated Notice of Allegation from you informing me that the Party had received an allegation that I had committed a Prohibited Act contrary to the provisions of Chapter 2, Clause I.5 of the Labour Party Rule Book. The allegation was that I had signed an open letter published by Labour Against the Witchhunt on 25 January 2018, titled: ‘On the case of David Watson: Open letter to the NEC, Compliance Unit and Constitutional Committee.’
On April 19, 2022, I sent an email response to investigations@labour.org.uk, part of which I am copying here below:
I did indeed sign the letter to protest against a Jewish Labour Party member facing suspension from the party for ‘anti-semitism.’ I disagreed with this, as I do now. Watson’s apparent ‘offence’ was to have used social media to criticise Israel for its systematic and violent oppression of the Palestinians. This was a political statement about the Israeli state, not a racist statement of anti-semitic abuse. When I signed the letter, I did so as a matter of personal political principle. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about Labour Against the Witchhunt. I have never attended a meeting held by it, nor by any of the other organisations that are now proscribed by the Labour Party. I have given none of them any financial or other means of support.
I received no response whatsoever to this email.
Following this, despite mounting doubts about retaining my membership of the Labour Party, I decided to give the Party the benefit of the doubt, since I was reluctant to give up on the hope that the Party would return to its socialist values of support for the working class and disadvantaged minorities, and on the efforts I had been making to reach out to the community where I live.
I was elected vice-Chair of the Highgate Branch of Holborn & St. Pancras over four consecutive years, from 2016 on, during which time I worked hard as one of a team trying to build up support for the Labour Party from the grassroots. This included promoting a decision to appoint a Women’s Officer and to encourage BAME voices in the Party. As a lifelong anti-racist feminist, these two issues were and remain closely related in my political understanding of justice and equality for all. Through these years I was a delegate to the constituency’s GC, and enthusiastically canvassed for the Party in the 2017 and 2019 elections.
Since 2020, I have become increasingly disappointed at the direction the Labour Party leadership has taken. Our local branch has moved away from the grassroots initiatives that previously seemed so promising. At GC, and despite the code of conduct celebrating the Party as a ‘safe and welcoming place for all our members…where the contribution of all is valued and the abuse of anyone is unacceptable…’, delegates with different values to those of the chair and other officers have been systematically silenced and excluded from debate. In January 2021, I sent a letter signed by ten delegates and five non-delegates to the then Chair, Sagal Abdi-Wali, with constructive suggestions about how to heal the divisions within the constituency Party. She discounted all the points made in the letter. Fast forward to July 2022 and, following publication of the Forde Report, attempts I and others made to open up a discussion about how to nurture unity within the Party were deemed out of order. Without discussion, how could we possibly hope to heal the ever widening rift within the constituency Party?
The last straw for me was not Keir Starmer’s recent speech showing the open door to members who don’t like his policies. I decided to leave the Party not because the leader positively wants people like me to leave. It was way before this, at the end of January when Stephen Kapos, a comrade I know well in my constituency, was informed that he would be expelled from the Party if he spoke at a panel for the SLN (Socialist Labour Network) Webinar on the 27th January 2023— on Holocaust Memorial Day.
I have no words to express my disgust and utter dismay at the Labour Party’s perverse decision to expel Stephen, a child survivor of the Holocaust and with personal experience of the devastating effects of right-wing Zionist ideology in Hungary on himself and his father. That he should have been expelled from the Labour Party for talking about his political sympathies with the people of Palestine on Holocaust Memorial Day exposes the current leadership of the Labour Party to be more concerned about using MacCarthy-like tactics to establish top-down control, than in promoting the values of democratic debate, anti-racism, political unity and international solidarity with those suffering from political oppression. It also makes cruel mockery of the Party leadership’s claims to observe zero-tolerance of anti-semitism. What’s more, the Party’s lack of support for striking workers in recent months is clear evidence of how the current leadership has turned its back on the Party’s principles of solidarity with the working class.
When I learnt of the threat to expel Stephen Kapos from the Party, my response was immediate. I could no longer think of any single reason to remain in a Party capable of demeaning itself in such a shameful and humanly wounding manner. I am sad to have reached this decision, but I see no alternative when confronted with the values of the current the Party leadership.
I therefore announce my resignation from the Labour Party with immediate effect. I am enclosing an attachment of my letter with this email.
Yours sincerely
Dr Harriet Evans
I think Stephen Kapos resigned and was not expelled after receiving a threatening letter but it amounts to the same thing.
It’s heartbreaking to read and good that these cases are being published for the public record. Someone should collect all the resignation statement into a book. Though it might, sadly, be repetitive without editing as there are so many. But the LP will not care about the words, it will rejoice at getting rid of another principled activist. I wonder if it will have enough people to do the leg work at a general election? Perhaps it calculates that you can win elections through media and social media and so on these days.
On Mon 20Feb I received, as I suppose did all members, an email from David Evans inviting applicants for Trainee Organisers which included:
“We are committed to ensuring our Trainee Organisers reflect the diversity of our party, our communities and our country.”
To reflect “the diversity of our party” would mean that only union jack-waving, Israel worshipping, Corbyn hating, right-wing members need apply.
This is a wonderful reposte of the kind that I frequently compose ….but will not send. The LP was ALWAYS, even at its best, a pile of dog shit – a broad alliance for those opposed to the Tories/ an alternative to a Conservative Govt. It was always dominated by the Right Wing. What we need to do is get rid of it – and the two party system that dominates our politics – just as, in the USA,. the two party system dominates theirs. It is deliberate. It ensures no real prospect for change. It is Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I loath these people more than I loath the Tories. The Tories wear oppositional colours: these people wear our colours but play for the enemy.
I have been thinking for some time about cancelling my membership, and I think the time has now come.
https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1628671651498844160?s=20 STARMER IS A LIAR & A FRAUD!
To Dr Harriet Evans:
Please do not leave politics though as there are many good causes that would benefit from your support.
I resigned after Evans sent round the circular of proscribed topics. I could not be a member of, and financially support, an explicitly antidemocratic organisation. I was not alone. The CLP I belonged to was always dominated by the right (pals of Smeeth, Austin, Snell etc) and has become largely moribund. Everything that has happened since supports my original decision. As someone who originally joined in 1970, I have encountered many instances of homophobia and misogyny, but never antisemitism. The torrent of abuse, continued by Starmer, poured on the left has indicated that the Labour Party as constituted is no more.