Crispin Flintoff suspended for doing his job and sending chair’s letter of resignation to Henley members
StandUp4Labour and Not the Andrew Marr Show host Crispin Flintoff has today been suspended by the Labour party for circulating, as part of his duties as secretary of Henley constituency party (CLP), the CLP chair’s letter of resignation from his party membership, as Skwawkbox covered this evening. The suspension has been described as ‘sinister’ and ‘Stalinist’ by Labour members and ex-members.
Below are Flintoff’s email to members, the chair’s letter and the party’s response:
Skwawkbox view:
There is nothing in the resignation letter that any impartial and objective observer would say is untrue – the facts of the vile and ceaseless demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn and the left by the Labour right and their friends in the media are well documented and indisputable.
And there is nothing blameworthy, whatever its contents, in a CLP secretary carrying out his or her responsibilities by circulating the letter so that members know why a new chair needs to be elected.
The cowardice and outright creepy darkness of the Labour right and the party under Keir Starmer and his sidekick David Evans seem always capable of reaching new depths. They have to be removed.
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Thanks for publishing the letters
SteveH
It’s creepy, those who have nothing to offer the electorate are only good at one thing, creeping around social media to Trump up charges against Socialists, Jews and Bame members
I’m sorry but you are a dishonest person.
lundiel – So you claim, do you have any proof of that. Or is it that I disagree with you and that’s the best riposte you could manage.
You wouldn’t answer the question. Either you agree with the leadership’s purge or you don’t. You can’t wriggle out of it by putting the onus on Mr Flintoff to keep quiet for fear of upsetting Evans and limit his own responsibilities to the rest of the CLP. What kind of political party runs an internal intelligence that self-,censors potentially embarrassing facts……certainly not a democratic one.
lundiel – What a load of b………….
Do you agree with the charges?
I’ll take that as a yes.
I wouldn’t have put myself in this position.
That’s not what I asked. My question was genuine. I wonder how long this can go on before democratic centrists find the Stalinism of Zionist Labour a step too far.
lundiel – It is an honest answer. I would have had enough sense not to expose myself in this way.
SteveH “I wouldn’t have put myself in this position.”
So, it’s aggree and comply or shut up and comply but we will suspend your membership?
You see nothing wrong with this? (Maybe then, it’s your cowardice that causes many here to suspect your acquiescence, but fwiw 20 – 25% of people allways ‘agree/acquiscend with authorty and power).
Steve H 15/11/2021 at 9:38 pm :
Expose yourself to – what – exactly? Since when have Socialists had to tip-toe around, as members of a Democratic Socialist party? Watching what they say, or do, or who they associate with. That doesn’t sound very democratic, to me.
Should Lisa Nandy face some sort of sanction for the second paragraph of this tweet :
https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1458404080792096774
It doesn’t appear to be in-line with current Southside Labour policy. If it were, many, many ex-members would not be ex-members and The Labour Party would not be in the flux it’s been in, for the past twenty months.
Crispin Flintoff would not be suspended.
Pick a side, Steve H, instead of coming across as a mini-Luke Akehurst. You’re, either, a democrat, or you’re not a democrat. Your choice.
Evans and Starmer have made their choice, and it’s not the right choice(well, I suppose if you want to play with words, it is the ‘right’ choice).
The idiocy of Labour’s actions have been debunked by a barrister, which makes the trolls position of not putting himself into this position look very cowardly and undemocratic.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1460534293961355274.html
I don’t mean to contradict you George, but I don’t think choice – or choosing – has anything to do with it, as if to say that at some point in his life Starmer (or Blair or Hodge or Smeeth or Mann or Austin etc) had a long hard think about whether they wanted to be a democrat or a fascist (and decided to be a fascist), no more than Jeremy or Ken did. They are what they are, and they can’t be what they’re not. As for SteveH picking a side, well the fact that he was a Jeremy Corbyn supporter for years and posting on here as such up UNTIL Jeremy announced he was standing down, AND has been fraudulently criticising him ever since then, tells you all you need to know. He’s a fake and a phony and always has been – ie a paid full-time shill and an im-poster, patrolling the site fifteen/sixteen hours a day practically every single day for the past five years or so (that I’m aware of).
And who but a fascist defends fascists and what they do!
“This suspension is either so monumentally bias that ‘perversity’ barely does it justice or they are so incredibly moronically stupid”
The latter is probably nearer the mark. Although a more accurate descriptive term would be ‘arrogantly stupid.’
It goes without saying that the same description applies equally to those seeking to excuse this kind of action by re-framing it to blame the victim.
I see that once again the charge Mr Flintoff is facing ( like so many others before him) is “antisemitism”. I guessed it would be as it is the catch all to get rid of anyone the hierarchy wants rid of.
Mr Flintoff is clearly a socialist and unwanted in the party so he is branded an “antisemite”.
By bandying about false allegations of “antisemitism” Labour has cheapened and degraded the meaning of the word and thereby trivialises the vile actions associated with real antisemitism so common and on the rise among the right at home and abroad.
Labour must stop using antisemitism to silence critics and must start to tackle the widespread racism particularly BAME racism which flourishes in the right wing of our party. But then as I have posted in the past “Black lives don’t matter” to Starmer, Evans and the majority of the PLP so that is unlikely to happen.
One more step on the short road to fascism. Note how this is centred on claims of anti-Semitism. Labour has a sordid and confused history in this regard. Foot and Crossman supported the creation of a Jewish State. Bevan threatened to resign over Attlee’s opposition to it. Tony Benn wrote articles of enthusiastic support for Zionism. Bevin and Attlee were right. The latter was in favour of a single State with an Arab majority to be governed democratically on the basis of proportional representation. A far better arrangement than partition. Labour’s support for Zionism from the 40s onwards is a disastrous mistake because it is support for colonialism, racism and oppression, not to mention a capitalist economy embracing huge disparities of wealth and a quasi-fascist political culture. The mistake was to believe Israel would be socialist, not something anyone with a cursory knowledge of Herzl’s vision could have believed. And how naive to think a quasi-theocratic State could be egalitarian. A Jewish State was always a bad idea rooted in values at odds with democracy and equality. And now we come to this. Fascism at the heart of Labour. Freedom of thought and speech are dead. You aren’t allowed to speak the truth about the misuse of anti-Semitism. Chomsky, Pappe, Flapan and Finkelstein are dirty words. To defend the human rights of Palestinians is to risk being dubbed a racist. This is how Labour commits suicide. Take the long view. Who will be seen to be right about Israel, Chomsky or Margaret Hodge? Ellman or Ilan Pappe? Flapan or Ian Austin? Labour is a shell of a party. Sunk in the shoddy manipulations of the short-term. Posterity will condemn its current leadership for what they are: cowards and neo-fascists.
Frank Dallas, as someone that was born under fascism and lived with fascism, we are not longer on the road, we have already arrived. This is fascism, this is why after 30 years membership I have cancelled my DD.
From my point of view I have not left the Labour Party, it is the Labour Party under Starmer and Evans that have abandoned me by turning the Labour Party into a fascist Party.
How as a democrat can I carry on paying levies into a fascist Party? How can I remain a member?
Simple answer, Maria – you can’t. It’s illogical to support Southside Labour, if you’re a Socialist.
Remaining a Member, is untenable.
I urge ex-Members to join Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project. That’s going in the right direction, and growing.
At the same time, support Jewish Voice for Labour. Either, by becoming a Member or simply donating or supporting JVL, in some way. Perhaps, subscribe to their newsletter.
Two, ‘mature’ bodies, organising from the bottom – up – which is the only way we’re going to get Socialism out of this mess we find ourselves in.
Frank, very little to disagree with you there. In fact I would like to copy it and send it to my nephew. Can’t email him in Antartica( true) so it is contact by mail via the yank station. It takes months. I think that Chomsky is in a bad place nowadays but I am hesitant to degrade him because of all of his honourable work. Age perhaps, I dunno. Regardless ta for the excellent post. ☮ Wobbly.
When the Labour Party, THE LABOUR PARTY FFS! can infer Jewish members and other anti-rascists are in fact anti semites, the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum!
The new Nasty Party, led by the new Beria.
(But Beria came to a sticky end.)
“I would have had enough sense not to expose myself in this way.”
Precisely the position taken by those Germans who kept their mouths shut whilst the Nazi leadership initiated the process which led to Auschwitz.
Saying nothing when the powerful become tyrannical is all that the tyrant requires.
In this case the CLP Secretary has published the reasoning behind the CLP Chair’s resignation. Not to have done so would have been a cowardly dereliction of duty.
The basis of democracy is freedom of speech and the encouragement of controversy: the Blairites hate democracy because they are fundamentally dishonest; they invariably break the trust honest, perhaps naive, people put in them. Keir Starmer, for example has broken every promise that he made to the membership of the Labour Party.
Such behaviour is disgraceful as was his discouragement of the Swedish prosecutor’s attempt to resolve the Assange case by interviewing Julian in London. “Don’t you dare!” the DPP, acting on behalf of the Trilateral Commission and the CIA, threatened, setting in motion the current extradition drama in which HMG proposes to sell a journalist to the criminals he exposed to the world.
bevin – You are as daft as Toffee.
No SteveH, Bevin’s words are precise and an accurate description of yourself. As many on this Blog have indicated, you are both a coward and facilitator of fascism – by contrast, those who speak out and challenge this bollocks are the defenders of actual liberalism and democracy, which you and much of the PLP certainly are not.
Constantly calling people names as a substitute for engaging in serious grown up discourse and refusing point blank to deal with the substance of reasoned and rational argument marks out those who engage in such behaviours as still stuck in the comfort blanket world of the school playground.
Tell us steveh, when, if ever, are you going to join the adult world by growing up? If you incapable of engaging with the grown ups, and the evidence strongly points to this being the case, perhaps you would be better off spending a few years at a more appropriate, lower, level.
I understand CBBC offers a reasonable starting point for your style and level of capabilities.
You just need to read Robert Winder’s book ‘Bloody
Foreigners. The Story of Immigration Into Britain’ (2013) to see how the Govt kept out Jewish refugees who tried to flee Germany.
In recent years tragically AS was used to bring down Corbyn and what went under the radar (apart from Hope Not Hate) was Trump emboldening far right US billionaires to fund far right groups and individuals around the world.
It was the left that kept them in check, we argued they try to set diverse working people against each other and help the rich and powerful, this is their Achilees Heel which we need to keep stressing, they are the useful idiots of the rich and powerful.
As Right Wing Labour and others play politically dangerous games, for left wing democratic socialists it will always be – Diverse Working People of the World Unite!
See previous comment.
First – am a bit confused by franks statement:
“The mistake was to believe Israel would be socialist, not something
anyone with a cursory knowledge of Herzl’s vision could have believed. ” ?
Sorry but what did you mean? – This is my view on Herzl
I have read only ONE book by him – “Old New Land” where it seems
that Herzls vision was Socialist in his support of “Mutualism”. In fact
it always staggers me that Herzl
was supposed to be the founder of Zionism for the “State” he writes
about in his Utopian vision is NOTHING LIKE Israel as it is now .. or
ever was. Of course Herzls vision was totally unrealistic and he
misunderstood the attitude of the Palestinians as he was not long enough
there. .. but he was an idealist ..
Second – of course the whole thing is ludicrous implying that what a person
quotes is what he believes in .. Possibly anyone sending anything that the
Labour Party has sight of should accompany it with a suitable quote
providing insight into the current Labour Party,. Here are suggestions from
“Nineteen Eighty Four”
“BIG BROTHER is watching YOU”
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face—for ever.”
Thanks Holby, incisive post!
Jewish communists of my great grandmother’s generation revered Joseph Herzl. Even today in Israel many on the left consult his writings and – not unlike UK left Labour members – see their own pasokification as a deliberate strategy by the extreme right-wing to equate zionism (which was once, when inclusive of Palestinians’ human and democratic rights, a left-wing idea) with Jewish supremacy and the hard-right American neo-con model. I buy that idea. The left can only restore (de-pasokify itself) when it loudly stands for Palestinian rights. It’s beginning to happen even in Israel, but – as Jeremy Coryn can attest – aggresively resisted and suppressed (by likudist neo-cons) everywhere else.
Thanks Quertboi – that has put a few things into perspective! I saw a brilliant video
from a Rabbi who said that in Judaism – Israel was regarded as a Holy Land , made
so by God. BUT this was independent of who was in charge of the Country at the time,
whether it was Romans, Syrians … whatever. He has some very sarcastic things to say
about Netanyahu. I will provide the link in a later post.
Some say Herzl had a Colonialist view of Israel in the way it developed – but he was there
very little time and did not talk to any Palestinians so could be excused his point of view.,
He had a completely different view of Egypt – which he thought should be independent
About my second point – I sometimes wonder if I have been dreaming – politicians keep
“forgetting’ incidents I remember as having happened and something different
remembered by everyone instead. What I remember is denied ..
Clearly this is MY fault and MY misremembering..
Obviously I must believe in what the Ministry of Truth tells me.
Just read Paul Keleman, ‘’The British Left and Zionism. A History of Divorce. And Winder’s book (see above) will equally blow your mind. Critical thinking trumps the lumpen Labour and Tory Right.
Read Paul Keleman, ‘The British Left and Zionism. A History of Divorce.’ And Winder’s book (above) will also blow your mind. Critical thinking trumps the
Lumpen Labour & Tory Right!
I see that Mr Flintoff has been suspended for reporting what Mr Collins wrote.
Presumably that would mean that any journalist who is a member of the LP, who reports something someone said which is considered out of order, gets suspended for reporting it.
And there I was thinking that they couldn’t become more insane.
goldbach – I suppose that would be dependant on whether it was distributed as part of an official communication from the Labour Party.
I wonder if Flintoff targeting has something to do with the advice shown on the not the Andrew marr show about the data protection fiasco and Evans personal liabilities in regards to the third party admission.End of the month and then ten days notice from my lawyer and I am looking for compensation from Evans and the Labour party members for this meltdown farce at fawlty towers HQ.Now we know what Lotto means with the Labour party although I never bought the ticket from the leader of the opposition.(alleged) I look forward to seeing you pay mr Steve H Hall.
SH – A nice try, and quite plausible on the face of it, were it not for the fact that numerous people who have been suspended from membership have had this action taken in relation to things they wrote/said which were NOT part of an official communication from the Labour Party.
It beats me why you are always at pains to defend this shower of dross that currently occupies the senior position within the LP.
Still, as one noted commentator often says – you have a right to your opinion
Keep smiling!
Flintoff didn’t even “report” the chairman’s letter of resignation; he merely attached it. If the LP wanted to go after anyone, it should be the writer of the letter.
Not that the LP should be going after anyone, anyway. #ItWasAScam #ItIsAScam
as the marx said “Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member” not to worry, spelling witches, inquisitions, HUAC and cults of misery all run out of energy – except this one because it will be remote, a business of one way electronic communications, controlling the profit tap while balancing the insatiable greed of capital and sufficiency for labour. thing is, everyday we see the comical ineptitude, universal failures, fear and lies that the PTB own. yet we have a solace membership card to cling to .
The Labour party needs to install political officers in the CLPs to ensure party cohesion on
official dogma.
Lundiel, waterboarding?
Lundiel, I appreciate your sarcasm. Somehow I suspect that unofficially they are a few members in every CLP that are acting as “political commissars” quickly reporting to Labour Headquarters.
Without doubt Maria.
people like our very-own stevieh, 20 – 25% always support power and authority (and don’t always realise they’re doing it)
You are absolutely correct Maria. I have the receipts.
No danger that Starmer will have to be suspended for doing his job.
Aaron Bastani
@AaronBastani
I’ve been blocked by this Tory councillor for saying this isn’t acceptable for someone in elected office.
@councillorpaul_ is mocking events in Liverpool where innocent people could have been killed.
Too many idiots like this in local government.
Image
11:08 pm · 15 Nov 2021·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1460384234376470533/photo/1
I share his outrage.
No doubt we’ll see the entire Labour front bench coming out in support of a fellow party member who has been so viciously insulted.
goldbach – Have his comrades in the SCG spoken out yet?
Good to see you back to your normal self after the comment (16/11/2021 AT 1:45 PM).
Happy days.
goldbach – Are we to take that as a no.
No, and do you know, Corbyn hasn’t even said sorry. It’s appalling, he should be apologising for causing all this trouble.
Indeed, lundiel. Fancy, the effrontery. Holding a poppy wreath, ready to place it at the Cenotaph without giving a thoughtt to the possibility that someone may have used it to photoshop that picture. But give the man a break. He wouldn’t have placed himself in that position would he? Not when his natural position is head-in-the-sand.
Don’t give up the day job.
“Have his comrades in the SCG spoken out yet?”
And risk a suspension letter from the Compliance Unit to explain their actions and behaviour?
Reasoning is obviously another grown up attribute you are lacking steveh. Along with gorm, gumption, charm and maturity.
Here is a post script – it contains link to a video by Rabbit Shapiro .
– he was mentioned in a previous post.
Apologies .. another predictive text disaster
Of course I meant RABBI Shapiro