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Activist responds to suspension by organising awards for ‘Labour heroes’ expelled by party

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74 Comments on Activist responds to suspension by organising awards for ‘Labour heroes’ expelled by party

Ken Loach among award recipients, together with surprise guests

A Labour activist has responded to being a victim of Labour’s spineless and often retrospective purge by organising an awards night to celebrate ‘Labour heroes’ who have been expelled by Keir Starmer and his right-wing allies.

Crispin Flintoff runs the ‘Grassroots Labour’ platform and hosts the popular weekly ‘Not the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday mornings’. He was suspended three weeks ago by Labour, in a move described by observers as ‘sinister’ and ‘Stalinist’, for doing his job as an elected constituency party (CLP) secretary after he circulated the resignation statement of Henley CLP’s departing chair.

So Flintoff looked at the cowardly bullying of the party machine and thought, let’s celebrate those who have been smeared, suspended and expelled for standing up for what’s right – and promptly organised an awards night to take place a week from tonight.

‘A night for Labour Heroes’ will take place at Conway Hall in London next Wednesday (15th December, 7:30-9:30pm). Flintoff told Skwawkbox:

I think it’s time we call these ridiculous suspensions and expulsions out. I’ve put on more fundraisers than any individual in Labour Party history [more than 250 in over nine years], yet I’ve been suspended for simply circulating the resignation letter of my CLP Chair.

At the same time as that, lifelong Jewish anti-racists are being labelled “anti-semitic” and people like Ken Loach, Pamela Fitzpatrick, Jo Bird and Ian Hodson have been expelled for being part of banned groups that were not banned when they were linked with them.

Instead of demonising these people, we need to celebrate them and honour them for their courage in speaking up against this nonsense.

Already confirmed to attend the evening are world-renowned film director Ken Loach, black Jewish activist Jackie Walker, straight-talking former miner John Dunn, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) co-chair Leah Levane, Bakers’ union leader Ian Hodson, left-wing Jewish councillor Jo Bird, harassed and bullied Councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick, JVL activists Graham Bash, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Diana Neslen, Carole Vincent, Joe Attard and the son of Riva Joffe, who will be speaking on behalf of his mother – another JVL activist – who died two weeks after she was suspended. Awards for the night include Suspension of the Year and Auto-exclusion of the Year.

Register here for ‘A night for Labour Heroes’.

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74 comments

      1. hambis19 – I am normally uncomfortable with the use of expletives in public comments. However, I have to endorse your comment.
        Those who constantly attack Mr Corbyn clearly never read the full report “The Work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to anti-semitism 2014-2019”. They either don’t like other contributors, or they don’t like Mr Corbyn ……………………. or possibly they don’t like themselves. Only a psychotherapist would know.

      2. goldbach – Is it an attack to simply point out the inconvenient but undeniable facts. It would be disingenuous to not acknowledge the facts

      3. We all (or at least almost all) know the many facts to which you refer in almost all of your comments. The fact themselves are not an attack. Your repetition of them, ad nauseam, is.

      6. Yes like ‘goldbach’ I am normally uncomfortable with such expletives, but on this occasion ‘hambis19’ can I heartily thank you. I don’t know anything about ‘SteveH’ but am sick of his tedious comments like this, which add absolutely nothing to the discussion.

      1. BofB – Yes she was for reasons that have yet to be explained but I suggest you read the first paragraph again which neglects to mention the inconvenient fact that a lot of members were expelled under Corbyn’s regime. We even had Jennie Formby bragging that she’d made the process more efficient in Feb19.

      2. ‘For reasons yet to be explained.’?

        Do try and keep up with current recent events and how the western manufacturing consent model actually works stevie boy.

        Or are you going to publicly take the position that the extreme day after day pressure for years on end of those you shill for in the PLP and their tame Councillors – from Mann and the demented harpy Hodge through to the Tinge’s – with their mates in the corporate media – had no influence whatsoever on the behaviour of those subject to that vicious onslaught?

        An onslaught which has now been turned not on a few members but on thousands of members.

        Anyone and everyone with a working brain cell recognises that you are attempting to deflect from what is taking place.

        Give it up and stop digging kid. You were rumbled a long time ago.

        – Cue further pathetic response playing the man rather than the ball along the lines of ‘little rant’ or similar.

        So sad and bloody predictable.

      3. Dave – As usual, lots of accusations but bugger all evidence.

      4. Oh, right, she was ‘bragging’, as opposed to making a statement about it! Typical black propagandist poisonous scumfuckery!

        Talking of which, I just happened to come across the following in a Mail article yesterday whilst doing some research – ie in an ‘article’ about Jeremy’s foreword to the Hobson book:

        Labour’s Margaret Hodge said: ‘For Corbyn to praise a book packed full of antisemitic conspiracies is disgusting. Ignoring this book’s blatant antisemitism is inexcusable & part of his shameful record of condoning antisemitic hate’.

        There were about ten lines in a book of 400 pages, but Hodge knew of course that the vast majority of people wouldn’t be familiar with the book and know that that was the case. And ditto the Mail.

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6978451/Corbyn-faces-fresh-anti-Semitism-accusations-endorsement-book-claimed-Jews-run-banks.html

      6. Yeah, sure Steve, she just couldn’t wait to start suspending and expelling members left, right and center, despite the fact that she had no part in deciding how individual cases were dealt with. You know damn well that after all the phony furore about A/S in the party, Jennie and Jeremy wanted to make it crystal clear that anti-semitism was being dealt with.

        Enthusiasm my arse, but THAT is what they pay you to do after all, isn’t it – ie try and discredit people on the left any way you can think of. And given that you do so on a daily basis, how come you started posting on a left-wing blog four or five years ago when Jeremy was leader. Doesn’t add up does it!

      7. Allan – If you read my posts from when Jeremy was leader you should be able to work that out for yourself.

      8. Yes,there were expulsions under Corbyn but, with the sole exception of Chris Williamson, they were all justified. There was nothing in Corbyn’s era that was remotely comparable to Keir’s unjustified vendetta against Jewish leftists- a vendetta even YOU would have do admit, if you possessed any decency, is indefensible, since it’s not the business of a largely Gentile party to tell its Jewish members they are obligated to support what purports to have been a Jewish nationalist movement, but which they believe to be reactionary and oppressive and which in any case has no reason to continue to exist AS a movement because it achieved its objective in 1948.

        There is no comparison between the largely-justified and legitimate expulsions Corbyn did and the totally UNjustified mass purge of socialists on false accusations of AS or just for not refusing to disassociate from groups which are proscribed for no valid reason, or in some cases for simply associating with those groups BEFORE they were proscribed, which is a thing Lavrenti Evans has no right to punish people for.

    3. Those who were expelled or left during Corbyn’s leadership of which I am one, are minuscule in number when compared with the Starmer/Evans purge. Those who left did so because of the People’s Vote nonsense, we saw through it but Corbyn was persuaded to back it and it was the end of him. Those expelled were mostly innocent victims of the antisemitism scam. Yet again Corbyn was given bad advice and was especially let down by Landsman.
      I shouldn’t have to keep repeating what we already know but you insist on trolling this blog with the purpose of Gaslighting people to ‘misremember’ recent history because you are a centrist fanatic.

      Reply

      1. lundiel – Do you know the numbers involved or are you just guessing?

      2. More to the point do you steve?

        Come on. Give us the comparison in terms of scale and depth.

        Its put up or shut up time.

      3. Dave – I don’t know the figures. If I did then I would have quoted them and provided links to the evidence.

      4. 0.3% under Formby, figures weren’t kept before her tenure. If we accept there were approximately 500,000 members that comes out at 1500. Like I said a miniscule amount compared to the hundreds of thousands purged.

      5. lundiel – Do you have a link to those figures, unfortunately they are redundant unless you can provide the figures for the current administration I don’t accept that expulsion was inconsequential to those expelled.

      6. You know full well that the current administration doesn’t publish figures, isn’t transparent or democratic. When Formby took over nothing was recorded and thousands were indefinitely suspended. She got to grips with that as quickly as as possible and discovered nearly all complaints were from a political faction, the one you belong to, and they were false. Formby thought transparent, honest action would be enough to satisfy the media, unfortunately they weren’t interested in truth and some comrades were thrown under a bus but what followed under Starmer was lies and authoritarianism.

      2. Pay attention! stevieh – at the Night for Labour Heroes.

      2. So out of the 673 accusations of A/S by LP members, more than half of them either received ‘a reminder of conduct’, or there wasn’t ‘sufficient evidence of a breach of party rules to proceed with an investigation’ – ie 146 and 220 respectively.

        And the complaints may have been made during said period, but how many of the cases were from BEFORE Jeremy became leader – ie dug up by groups and individuals trawling through social media trying to find anything they could make a complaint about so as to undermine Jeremy’s leadership and keep the Big Lie alive that the LP is riddled with antisemites. And how many of those who were reported to the LP were right-wingers, who are much more likely to spout something that’s actually anti-semitic than anyone on the left!.

        I expect most of the accused who were on the left – and the accusation against them stemming from the previous two or three years – were people calling out the A/S black op campaign for what it was – ie a Smear Campaign to sabotage Jeremy’s leadership and his chances of winning a general election.

      3. Allan – It is disingenuous to lump the two together. When an accused person accepts ‘a notice of conduct’ they have accepted that they are guilty You could liken it to a police caution.

      4. That’s nonsense stevieh. In some circumstances, one has to accept a notice of conduct. It doesn’t imply guily. Are you still beating your wife? When you answer it, by definition you’ve accepted a notice of conduct (disquised as a question). Do you beat your wife?

      6. There is nothing whatsoever disingenuous about it…. They were not found to have said anything anti-semitic!

        And I take it that you’re not going to respond to the legitimate points that Frank Dallas made, and just pretend you didn’t see his post, even though we ALL know that you DID, and no doubt within seconds of him posting it!

        Why do you bother Steve, when just about everyone who follows skwawkbox knows you’re a complete fucking fraud!

      7. Allan – …..and have you complaining again that I post too many comments, you can’t have it both ways.
        Frank was simply expressing an opinion that he can’t support, why would I waste my time.

    7. And like the good little paid full-time shill that he is, SteveH got his ‘comment’ in first, and within eleven minutes of the notification email going out to subscribers. And I have no doubt whatsoever that he saw it the moment it arrived, and had probably come up with what to say within a couple of minutes, if THAT, but thought he’d better leave it a while longer before posting it, otherwise readers might catch on to the fact that he monitors the site constantly.

      So out of three threads/articles – ie this one, and the one before the previous one – he just happened to post the first comment! As he has done on literally hundreds and hundreds of occasions before! Oh, right, but he’s just a normal, ordinary person!!

      Reply

    8. The ones expelled under Corbyn, with the sole exception of Chris Williamson, were ACTUAL antisemites- Corbyn removed everyone from the party who was an actual anti-Jewish bigot. None of his expulsions were comparable with Starmer’s collective expulsion of all anti-Zionists, which is indefensible since everyone knows anti-ZIonism has NOTHING in common with AS and since, with Israel already in existence since 1948 and assured of its continued existence no matter what, there is no need for to MAKE anyone be a Zionist.

      Reply

      1. kenburch – Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and many others who were forced out of the party will disagree with you.

  2. Today, Sir Keir Starmer spoke about leadership & moral authority on PM.. Leadership & Moral Authority? Did I hear him correctly or do I have a problem with my radio?

    Reply

  3. The cases of Mr Flintoff and Ms Fitzpatrick make the pages of this weeks Private Eye which was not known for its sympathetic coverage of Mr Corbyn. The article is pretty damning of the disciplinary process currently in force.

    Reply

    1. Thank goodness the current process will very soon be replaces. The system put in place by Corbyn/Formby were not fit for purpose.

      Reply

      1. Nobody would argue that a process that can be manipulated in such an illiberal and self serving way needs replacing. You may also feel it appropriate to criticise those that exploit bad legislation in such a vindictive manner.

      2. Jim – My view, which I expressed many months ago on these pages is that once the current process had been found wanting by the EHRC then all the cases that fall within remit of the new approved procedures and processes should have been suspended until the new procedures where in place.
        It should be noted that cases that do not involve sex or protected characteristics will continue to be held under the old {current) system.

      3. Steve that’s a very fair comment . The concern,of course,is that the new rules will be drafted under a regime that allows a person to be expelled for “crimes” such as giving an interview to a group who a year later are proscribed.

      5. SteveH
        We know the number for New New Red Tory Labour it’s
        £14 million squids

  5. Absolutely brilliant response to Labours vicious and disgusting suspensions and expulsions for ” antisemitism”.
    The people who instigated and carried out the expulsions are the real antisemites. They have cheapened the word “antisemitism” and have undermined and downgraded the experiences of Jews who have had to contend with ( mostly ) extreme right antisemitism. In so doing the Labour party has done a massive disservice to British Jews.
    Antisemitism is a dangerous form of racism and should never be exploited or used as a weapon against political opponents. The Zionist zealots and right wing anti Socialists both within and outside the party have done this to the detriment of our Jewish brothers and sisters as evidenced by the fact that antisemitic hate crimes are at their highest level for 40 years.

    Reply

      1. Steve H Jeremy never exploited antisemitism or used it as a weapon against his political enemies as Starmer is doing now.
        Jeremy who was smeared as a existential threat to Jews is no longer leader and antisemitic hate crimes are at an all time high in GB. How do you explain that Steve?

  6. The difference is, Starmer celebrates the suspensions and expulsions and is colluding in the process. Corbyn didn’t drive the process or celebrate it. He made a mistake in trying to placate the Zionists, which is a little like trying to placate Stalin or to use a comparison some will no doubt complain about, Von Pappen’s attempts to placate the strutting little Austrian he thought he could outwit. The expulsions during Corbyn’s leadership were used AGAINST him by the bureaucracy, the PLP and the MSM. The current expulsions are used IN SUPPORT of Starmer. He is portrayed as acting against anti-Semitism when in fact he is expelling Jews by the dozen. The business is transparent enough: false accusations of wide and deep anti-Semitism to discredit Corbyn and the left and then a continued purge of the invented anti-Semites to bolster Starmer: and all to prevent a left-wing agenda and to protect an apartheid State which imprisons 2 million in the Gaza Strip and treats Arabs in the WB like animals.

    Reply

  7. Well Steve as you seam to work for Starmers cult that or your a sockpuppet for free? In that case he got a bargin.

    Oh and why don’t you ask your fellow centerest (Far Right wing freinds) Rather than keep demanding we do the work for you?

    Reply

  8. Is Sir Keir Stasi Starmer getting a ‘free’ tcket for the Night for Labour Heroes – or would he need to be a real LOTO to qualify?

    Reply

      1. He really doesn’t need to attend. He will be there ‘in spirit’.

        In fact, it would be better if he didn’t. Poker is not a game that democratic socialists play very well, so we’d rather not give any indication (to Stasi Starmer or the broader powers-that-be) of the tremendous formative chemistry that is happening in our midst – and all without a petri dish. Spontaneous chemistry.

        The synchronised MSM is getting bord with the covid narrative lie, and some good old ‘loony leftism’ would fill their bellies.

      3. qwertboi – That statement is as accurate as your anti-vax nonsense. Corbyn’s PLP membership has been suspended but his Labour Party membership was reinstated by the NEC ages ago.

    1. not so much an inner monster, more a obsequious, obedient ‘centrist’ . Even Oven-Ready Boris wouldn’t try that one – he knows a good few million of us would crowd-fund an action against HMG if he even suggested it – and then the whole House of covid-lies Cards, the real survival rates, the infection-fatality rate, the fact that 2020 had the10th-lowest annual deathrate since 1945 (‘excess deaths’ my arse), the pcr testing deception, and the probability that more people are dieing from the vaccine than from coronavirus, etc., etc, – would fall.

      Centrist Labour, of course, isn’t quite as smart as the corrupt operators we call “class enemies”.

      Reply

    2. TV show deletes poll after 89% oppose mandatory vaccination

      ITV breakfast television show ‘Good Morning Britain’ received backlash on social media after deleting a poll which showed a vast majority of respondents opposed mandatory Covid-19 vaccination.

      The poll, which asked viewers whether it was “time to make vaccines mandatory” in response to the spread of the Covid-19 Omicron variant, was posted to Twitter on Tuesday and soon received more than 42,000 votes.

      A whopping 89% of those who voted opposed any scheme to make vaccination mandatory, with just 11% in favor.

      After the poll went viral, however, social media users noticed that it had been deleted by the Good Morning Britain Twitter account, and critics accused the program of trying to cover up the public consensus.

      https://www.rt.com/uk/542507-mandatory-vaccine-poll-deleted/

      Reply

      1. Thank you for that Allan Howard. The ‘free and fearless’ press will be reporting back to the behavioural psychologists at SAGE and – of course – MI5.

      2. Sadly GloboCap don’t care what the public thinks, so it’ll continue filling the airwaves with not-so-subtle “nudges” via media shit-stirring like in this episode, either till the public come around or Boris resigns so he can be replaced by a more Vax-Pass-compliant authoritarian.

  10. Since Sept 2015 was anyone expelled or suspended from “Labour” for any reasons that can’t be directly/indirectly linked to Antisemitism, Palestine or Zionist Jews/Non-Jews?
    I can only remember that lady who commented on her daughter’s green party policies, but I am am sure she was a Non-Zionist/”Fringe” Jew.

    Reply

      1. Exactly Linda, or the profound level of Racism experienced by Black, Muslim, Other Minorities including “Fringe” and Black Non Zionist Jews completely blanked. The avoidance of the Forde Inquiry.The Blatant Abuse of Antisemitism for political gains, the worst kind of Antisemitism I can ever think of. The list can go on and on and on and on, but one thing is for sure, The Occupying TORY Colonisers Dominating “Labour” as The Neo-New-Labour Party TORIES are White European Racist Zionist Jews and Non-Jews, there is NO ROOM for Black, Muslim, Other Minorities including “Fringe”
        and Black Non Zionist Jews, Pro-Palestine Supporters, Anti War Campaigners OR The “UNDESRVING POOR” bellow upper Middle Class!
        ANYONE who still believes that there are more to THIS “Labour” than the ~10 or so Democratic Socialist UK Labour Party MPs, and that it is anything other than PURE and WORSE than Conservative TORY about THIS so called “Labour” are TORIES themselves!
        If ever we are to have a voice FOR The PEOPLE in Parliament we need to vote the Neo-New-Labour TORIES out to make way for the next GE.
        Labour is NOT Racist!
        Labour is NOT Classist!
        Labour is NOT Anti Socialist!
        Labour is FOR The PEOPLE!
        Labour is NOT FOR The Elites/Establishment!
        That THING that Thatcher/Blair Created, ingesting Labour, is NOT Labour, it is TORY, through and through!

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