Support Apsana Begum!

Apsana Begum MP. image: David Woolfall, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

JVL Introduction

The news from Poplar and Limehouse is upsetting, the national Labour party’s unwillingness to help sort it out disturbing.

Apsana Begum, a left-wing socialist and feminist, was elected as Labour MP there in 2019, faced racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic attacks during her election campaign.

And after.

She was subjected to allegations of fraud by the local Labour Council for failing to disclose information when applying for social housing.

She argued that she was a victim of domestic abuse, coercive control and financial abuse and was acquitted on all charges.

Now she faces a trigger ballot amid signs of smears and harassment of her and her supporters.

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See the G2 interview with Apsana Begum following her trial: ‘It felt like political persecution’: Labour’s Apsana Begum on the trauma of her criminal trial

This article was originally published by Labour Hub on Thu 16 Jun 2022. Read the original here.

Support Apsana Begum!

As many will know, the internal life of the Labour Party has been something of a white knuckle ride for many high-profile activists on the left over the last two years.  Regional conferences have been subject to bureaucratic manoeuvres. Members have been suspended for old links with groups proscribed at a much later date. Candidates for office have been barred from standing on the most spurious grounds.

Another target of the authoritarian internal regime is likely to be left MPs, who face trigger ballots in the next months. Poplar and Limehouse MP Apsana Begum is facing hers now.

Activists are perturbed. One told us: “We need your help and support because what is happening here is shocking. It’s a misogynistic campaign of harassment, rule breaking, bullying, intimidation and abuse.”

Apsana Begum was born and brought up in East London and worked for the borough of Tower Hamlets before being elected to Parliament in 2019 by a massive majority. She subsequently spoke out about the racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic attacks that she had to endure during her campaign.

She is also a survivor of domestic abuse and became Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence and Abuse. She has repeatedly raised with the Party that her ex-husband, although suspended, is still actively campaigning against her – along with his close allies in the Council that pursued a fraud case against her in 2021.

Charged on three counts of failing to disclose information when applying for social housing, she argued that she was a victim of domestic abuse, coercive control and financial abuse. She was acquitted on all counts.

There has never been any acknowledgement of the suffering caused to Apsana by a Labour administration bringing these charges.  Additionally, Apsana has received no proper support from the Labour Party over the issue.  For a Party that claims to take the issue of abuse seriously, this is concerning.

Meanwhile, the investigation into her ex-husband grinds on, all while he continued to be a member of the Tower Hamlets Council Labour Group until May 2022. Allies of his are implicated in the campaign against her. Apsana made a complaint about one member who allegedly sent an email to all members of Blackwall and Cubitt Town Branch with a copy of a letter repeating allegations from which she had been cleared and revealing her home address.

There are also troubling allegations that the meeting that ran the trigger ballot may not have been properly constituted; that members may have been subject to harassment; that new members may be being signed up en bloc; that misinformation may be being disseminated. These concerns – and others – have been raised with the London Region Director.

Meanwhile Apsana’s health and wellbeing are under threat. One member told us: “Enough is enough. This needs to stop. What I am witnessing here shocks me to my core. It is indecent and inhumane.”

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Comments (14)

  • Margaret West says:

    What can we do? This sounds as though it could be
    a police matter – ie harassment from an ex-partner
    and his associates. The recent murder of an MP and
    the fact that the murderer had a list of other MPs
    as potential victims should surely act as a warning.

    She – or one of her supporters should at least go
    to the police with her fears. Having her address
    circulated with a letter telling lies about her should
    entitle her to redress – or any least some protection.

    Does anyone have any ideas of how else to support her?

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  • Joseph Hannigan says:

    Sadly the current LP shows little sign of acting for those who are not in the “Chums of Starmer” (shrinking fast?) group,

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  • John Mclaughlin says:

    The ruination of the labour party began, the day that red tory starmer was elected leader, and it will cary on until he and his blairite tory cohorts are kicked out.

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  • Syed Tariq Rafique says:

    Full support for an extraordinary woman.

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  • Apsama needs to join Claudia Webbe and Jeremy Corbyn as an independent socialist MP and stand as that. She would probably win

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  • Richard Snell says:

    The Tory Party is struggling to deal with its own moral corruption and is not dealing with it very well. It is low-hanging fruit waiting to be knocked out of the tree by a Labour Party which has been handed every tool it needs to do so by the Tories themselves.
    The Labour Party however is itself descending into a form of insanity which is disturbing as the silliness of the Tories is not. Why?
    Because the Tories are behaving like Tories: what else would you expect of them?
    But the Labour Party leadership is laying around it like a soldier gone mad in battle, attacking friend and foe alike, with no sense of the damage it is doing or the hurt it is causing.
    This is shocking, and, precisely because it is not what any-one should expect from the party that is making a claim to be the most democratic and compassionate of the two parties.
    It is the worse for being so personal: lives are being wrecked by this awful campaign of attrition in which individuals are picked out as targets and being fired on in ways which makes it almost impossible to defend themselves.
    This kind of cruelty cannot be allowed to go on: but having said that, what needs to happen for it to be stopped?

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  • Sandy Palmer says:

    This is an appalling situation and solidarity to Apsana. There will be no fairness from the regional director, they are all in Starmer’s pocket, rules have meant nothing to staffers for some time now.
    Rotten from the inside to promote/tolerate this abuse of an elected MP.
    Retweet and support.

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  • Eddie Dougall says:

    Like Margaret I would like to know what we can do to help.
    The party is now run more like in N.Korea than a in a democracy. How do Starmer’s people sleep at night. Though to be fair KS seems half asleep most of the time.

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  • Guillaume Dohmen says:

    Some of the actions of the present Labour Party members remind me of the 1930’s in certain European countries.

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  • Stephen Richards says:

    There appears to be a distinct lack of substance to substantiate any statement or accusations made in this article.

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  • Nigel Haines says:

    Well said Richard Snell & Eddie Dougall. Those of us who were in the Party 60 years ago became well versed in the political shenanigans that the “Tories in Labour clothing” at the top of the Party’s bureaucracy were capable of. Forty years ago when Michael Foot’s tenure as leader threatened their careerist postions, many of those political scoundrels scuttled off to join the Liberal Party and form the Liberal Democrats. Today their kind have come to the conclusion that was a dead end and thus are concentrating their efforts to kill off the fight for socialist policies within the Party by doubling down on their scurrilous efforts to denigrate leftist opponents with spurious claims of “anti-semitism” when they in fact mean opposition to the far right policies of the Likud Party of Israeli Zionist terrorism. And when they make false claims about opponent’s social housing claims it’s to act as a smokescreen for their own well documented antics of getting their noses into the monetary benefits of the parliamentary trough at every opportunity. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

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  • Solidarity with Apsana. What a cruel, unjust world we live in.

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  • Margaret West says:

    I agree with comments about Labour Party.

    I was watching a series of programs about Putin
    – a repeat. The last one referred to the time
    when the price of oil massively reduced and
    the Russian Economy crashed. The “President”**
    at the time decided that there was plenty of talent
    among the Russian people and they ought to be
    able to take advantage of it.*** However for Russia
    to thrive it needed to be democratic and not
    centrally dictated .. I thought hmmm.. how like
    the Labour Party now – needless to say Putin
    the then “Prime Minister” did not like this .

    **The position was notional – for Putin, the Prime
    Minister was really in charge.
    *** The UK too could thrive – we are not taking
    advantage of our young people but that would
    take a lot longer to explain in detail ..

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  • Khalida Khan says:

    Goodness knows what it is like to have the lived experienced of fear and uncertainty of a court case. She is able and accountable . I feel proud to have an advocate in Parliament that actually represents my views on both domestic and international issues. The persecution of Assange as an example.

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Comments are now closed.