Devon CLP sees chair and secretary suspended – one of them the party’s candidate in the last two general elections
On Friday the SKWAWKBOX reported that the chairs and secretaries of at least a further six local Labour parties (CLPs) had been suspended as Keir Starmer and his sidekick David Evans escalate their war on Labour members and their human rights.
‘At least’ was the key phrase – because in reality the number was more than double that and potentially even more. Another seven CLP’s have now lost their elected officers because of the party’s assault of members’ legally-protected right to freedom of speech – an assault that breaches even the EHRC report recommendations that Starmer and Evans have promised to implement in full.
The SKWAWKBOX has not named most of the CLPs involved, to protect the officers from possible reprisals by the party, which demands disciplinaries are kept confidential – even while freely leaking details to the hostile press. But the suspended officers of Newton Abbot CLP in South Devon want to speak out.
CLP chair James Osben was the party’s parliamentary candidate in the 2017 and 2019 general elections has been suspended, along with CLP secretary and hard-working community campaigner and local election candidate Jane Haden.
The area’s only Labour councillor in the area, Ryan Hall, had already been suspended simply for tweeting the #SackGaskin hashtag against the highly-unpopular south-west regional director, who among other things has banned CLPs from making donations to food banks and charities for poor children and homeless people.
Cllr Hall told the SKWAWKBOX:
In just 9 months, Starmer has destroyed what we have worked tirelessly to build in Newton Abbot over the past years. We are an area the party does not care about, but still campaigners come out and work hard for the party.
Now is not the time to be silent.
Officers at least thirteen CLPs suspended over a period of just two days, as the party flails against its most valuable asset: the members who work and have worked hard on the ground, often with little support from the party machine – and against the people they have elected, many of them Jewish, to represent them in the local party, just for carrying out that duty.
A once-great party is shamed and diminished by its so-called ‘leaders’.
Edit: this article originally described six further CLPs having officers suspended. That total very quickly became seven and the article has been amended accordingly.
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