Instead of Stuffing the Ballot Box They Take Votes Out of It!
As our letter in today’s Guardian says, if Labour Party General Secretary Iain McNicol were presiding over a local authority or parliamentary election, he would be facing years inside for corrupt electoral practices.
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What type of a Party is it where leading officials spend their time poring over party membership lists in order to prevent as many as possible voting for the ‘wrong’ candidate?
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| Ron Draper of the Bakers & Allied Workers Union has been suspended - why? for this photo |
We have a situation where a billionaire member, Lord Sainsbury, gave £2m to the Liberal-Democrats, another party, yet members who previously supported the Green Party are banned from voting. A situation where previous supporters of the Tories, Lib Dems and UKIP are welcomed into the Labour Party but anyone who has ever supported a party to the left of the Labour Party is banned.
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| Iain McNicol has a contempt for Labour members - Corbyn's first act should be to send him packing - 'surplus to requirements' |
Sainsbury has form. He previously funded the Social Democratic Party and then David Owen’s breakaway SDP. His commitment is to his own class and subverting the politics of socialism.
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| McNicol is a liar - the decision to suspend someone is made by officials and rubber stamped by right-wing NEC members such as Baxter below |
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| Johanna Baxter, who was kicked off the NEC by party members, is taking her revenge by suspending some of them. Every night she takes home a large spreadsheet of those to purge |
McNicol, Stolliday and co. are the political detritus that is left from the days of Blair. When corrupt privateers laid claim to chunks of the NHS under the motto of ‘whatever works’, even though it was clear that privatisation could only work to the benefit of the wage cutters and the profiteers. It was the days when attacks on unions, refugees, benefit claimants were fine but regulating the City of London was not fine, at least until the banks went cap in hand for over £300 billion in handouts.
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| hopefully Chuku's Streatham LP will be intensely relaxed about deselecting someone who consider most LP members and constituents beneath him |
It was the days when Jack Straw, Stephen Byers and others in New Labour lent themselves out like cab for hire, open to any bidder willing to pay them for parliamentary influence. This is because corruption and right-wing politics go hand in hand. It was a time when Peter Mandelson, the 'Prince of Darkness' was 'intensely relaxed' about people becoming filthy rich and even more intensely relaxed about poverty, cutting benefits and demonising unions. But even if Mandelson has now recanted, his political successor, Chuku Ummuna 'admires the New Labour godfather as a champion of industrial activism'.
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| Shami Chakrabarti - despite her Report giving the Zionists and the Right much of what they wanted, it called for an open and transparent disciplinary process - that was too much for Iain McNicol who has ignored its recommendations that peoples' social media past should not be trawled |
The idea that the Labour Party might stand for an alternative to the present free market economy is anathema to New Labour. Defence of capitalism and the free market is the real reason for today’s purge. They first started off with false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ although no one has yet presented any evidence of this ‘anti-Semitism’. When Shami Chakrabarti produced a report which stated that the Labour Party wasn’t overrun with anti-Semitism she was savaged, her peerage being the excuse for vitriolic and vicious personal attacks.
A week ago I cited an articlein the Telegraph that thousands of Labour Party members were to be expelled for anti-Semitism. I wrotethat anti-Semitism was now a weapon of mass expulsion. Clearly McNicol and fellow conspirators realised that they might have a hard time proving that there had been a sudden outbreak of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
Instead people have been barred from voting and suspended for the most trivial things. Catherine Starr tweeted that ‘“I fucking love the Foo Fighters” a band. That was enough to merit a ban. Presumably using the word ‘fuck’ gets you banned now! Harrow Councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick was banned for ‘rudeness’ at a meeting. Amazing, who said? She wrote that ‘“I was devastated and felt criminalised,” Pamela wrote on Twitter. “Luckily I have had fantastic support - others might feel completely isolated.” Labour Membership: 7 People Banned From Leadership Election For Bizarre Reasons
I had one woman who has been a member for 25 years who wrote to me yesterday the following:
WHY HAVE I BEEN SUSPENDED ??? I have been a Labour Party member & donor for well over 25 years, supporter for over 50 years, & am also a retired Civil Servant (member of PCS 1971 to date & always VERY polite) & I have NEVER joined ANY other Party, . I was looking forward to voting for Jeremy Corbyn in the Leadership Election (as I did last year), I received an email on 19th saying I would get my ballot, I was told only on 24th on the phone to The Labour Party at 2 pm that I HAD DEFINITELY NOT BEEN BANNED, so why did I get this shocking letter at 6.14 pm ie AFTER the LP office was closed so I couldn't talk to anyone & was awake & stressed all night, I am 69 & housebound with mental health history so a shock like this is APPALLING, PLEASE DO SOMETHING URGENTLY, ie BEFORE it is too late for me to vote, I AM HORRIFIED, I had heard NEC was purging people for supporting JC but NEVER thought it would be me at my age & history, 99% of my political activity this year has been on Twitter but they say they are investigating me for AN email (date unspecified) & I have NO RIGHT TO APPEAL, PLEASE DO SOMETHING TO REINSTATE ME IMMEDIATELY, voting is so VERY important to me, my CLP is looking into this as well but I need all the help I can get.
Those who have suspended this woman on the basis of a tweet, without even bothering to explain to her what she had allegedly done wrong, are the ones who should be expelled. Their behaviour is far worse than rude, it is insulting and demeaning and cruel. McNicol and co. should be sent packing the moment Jeremy Corbyn wins the leadership. And make no mistake – despite McNicol’s attempt to perpetrate an act of fraud and larceny, the support for Jeremy Corbyn is too overwhelming for his efforts to have anything but a marginal effect.
But surprisingly (!) Michael Foster, the right-wing Zionist millionaire who tried to keep Corbyn off the ballot paper and who called Corbyn supporters SA Stormtroopers in the Mail on Sunday, has not been disciplined. Presumably anyone who isn't a right-wing Progress supporter or a Zionist a Nazi Brownshirt member of the SA is just part and parcel of what passes for polite conversation.
But surprisingly (!) Michael Foster, the right-wing Zionist millionaire who tried to keep Corbyn off the ballot paper and who called Corbyn supporters SA Stormtroopers in the Mail on Sunday, has not been disciplined. Presumably anyone who isn't a right-wing Progress supporter or a Zionist a Nazi Brownshirt member of the SA is just part and parcel of what passes for polite conversation.
Chakrabarti
McNicol in his malevolence, has ridden a coach and horses through the Report of Shami Chakrabarti and her recommendations. In the final paragraph of her Forward, Chakrabarti wrote that:
‘If, as I hope and believe, these recommendations are fully embraced by the Labour Leadership, I ask everyone in the Party to work with them in good faith. I ask for a moratorium on the retrospective trawling of members' social media accounts and past comments, so as to create the much needed atmosphere and opportunity for learning, positive consensus and progressive change.'
In the section Limitation and a Moratorium Chakrabarti wrote that: ‘I further recommend that once my guidance (set out in Chapter 4 above) on appropriate language and behaviour is disseminated, there be a moratorium on triggering new formal investigations (as opposed to informal discussions) on comments and conduct arising prior to my report.’
Despite the National Executive Committee approving this Report, McNicol has completely ignored it in his attempts to rig the election. Jeremy Corbyn should demonstrate that he has no truck with this behaviour and send McNicol packing after the leadership election. Let this former GMB political fixer return to previous pastures, along with Tom Watson and let them carry out their wrecking activities there.
Before the crucial NEC meeting of 12 July which put Jeremy Corbyn on the ballot paper, Executive member Jim Kennedy of Unite had a solicitors letter sent to McNicol which bluntly stated that:
‘You have an obligation as General Secretary to act in good faith. You personally are required by the Party rules to be transparent and to uphold the aims and values of ‘open democracy’. The manner in which this special meeting has been arranged has all the hallmarks of anything but “open democracy”. [my emphasis] McNicol was openly accused of calling the meeting at short notice in order to exclude trade union delegates who are working and live outside London.
McNicol had to be told that he was under a duty to act fairly and that the election of officers should be conducted in a‘fair, open and transparent manner.’ McNicol’s behaviour in other words was anything but fair, open or transparent.
What kind of General Secretary is it who needs to be told that ‘natural justice requires you to act fairly’. As the experience of the suspensions of the last few days demonstrates, McNicol wouldn’t know what fairness was if it bit him in his nether regions.
The battle is on and the first thing that Jeremy Corbyn and the new NEC should do when they take office is to reverse all the suspensions and possibly conduct an additional ballot of those who were denied a vote in order that their votes are added to the existing vote. That would be a measure of recompense and would also be a telling demonstration of the corrupt and abusive nature of McNicol’s purge.
Tony Greenstein