The Labour party expelled award-winning filmmaker Phil Maxwell – just as he was about to vote, with his local Labour colleagues, on a motion demanding that Liverpool City Council reject a plan to expand the city’s John Lennon Airport that will damage local wetlands known as ‘Liverpool’s last piece of countryside’, undoing three decades of work by volunteers to restore it after it became pollluted following the original airport works.
The expulsion was announced during the ‘CLP’ meeting to vote on the motion – and rendered the meeting ‘inquorate’, without enough members present to make the motion official. Maxwell told Skwawkbox:
Tonight we were going to discuss a motion calling on Liverpool councillors to reject moves to expand Liverpool John Lennon Airport. This was basically to reinforce a policy already agreed unanimously by the CLP in 2019. In 2019 Liverpool City Council also declared that planet Earth is facing a climate change emergency.
The CLP requires a minimum of 30 members to attend a meeting for it to be quorate. The start of the meeting was taken up with people arguing that the motion (the only one on the agenda) should not be taken. I was then told by the secretary that he’d been told in the afternoon I was no longer a member of the Party. I said that it was news to me and I looked forward to getting the email. I was seconding the motion.
The person chairing the meeting was substituting for the actual chair (who was watching the Liverpool match). He removed me from the meeting, which meant there was no longer a quorum and the motion could not be taken! The proposer of the motion, Jane Hammett, then informed the meeting (in the chat):
“Another good comrade expelled. The CLP can’t even manage a quorate meeting. I am resigning from the Labour party.“
The chair was the same person who made the initial complaint that ended with the expulsion of the Wavertree 4.
Jane’s resignation was followed by another member, Dave Toller. He told me about a question he asked of our Labour MP about why she didn’t vote against the Tories welfare cap.
“She gave a weak excuse at the end of her report about there being two votes and it was a Tory trap. I asked if she thought her Liverpool colleagues had fallen for the trap. She said individuals make up their own minds about breaking the whip and I’d have to ask them why they did on this occasion, completely missing the point that the question was why she hadn’t.”
Dave advised the meeting that he was resigning immediately.
As a result, the meeting broke up without the motion being passed. The Labour right has been behind the new mayor of the city since she was imposed as part of a shortlist of two following the scandal of the Starmerite’s decision to remove without explanation – though it later emerged that she had promised to deal with any corruption she found if she became mayor – the three women councillors originally shortlisted, to prevent the selection black left-wing councillor Anna Rothery, who had been critical of Keir Starmer.
The conveniently-timed expulsion has prevented a group of local Labour members sending a message to the mayor to block the airport expansion, which the council controversially approved this week. Maxwell’s partner, fellow filmmaker Hazuan Hashim, has also been hounded by Labour as part of its war on Liverpool, a strongly left city.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Labour can play their party games, from now until the next election(May). Then they will find out if Liverpool is a Labour city, or a Left city.
Am I the only one who is more than a little surprised that they could only scrape together the absolute bare minimum to form a quorate for this meeting.
For once, I will take the trouble to answer the trolling hamster (BTW, did you nick your avatar from the pornsite XHamster? Asking for a friend…).
Based on my experience in my own BLP and CLP, it’s not just socialists and avowed “lefties” who have become disillusioned by the Starmer “leadership” to the point of no longer attending meetings. Self-declared “centrists” have previously voiced their concern and bafflement at the lack of any vision or policies from Rodney and his pro-Establishment pals. When people don’t see any substance in meetings, they stop attending.
hambis19 – Which one would have imagined would make the left’s job easier, if only they could mobilise all these lefty Corbyn supporting party members that they claim exist.
Do you mean “how can I throw a lame duck question in that deflects the focus from how corrupt the right ( you) are.”
bedroc56 – I simply thought it was an obvious question to ask given the obvious impact that the exclusion of just one member had. Where were all the self appointed guardians of ‘the left’ in the country’s most left-wing city when they were needed?
I knew Phil when he was leader of Tower Hamlets Council. totally solid guy. Being expelled from the Labour Party ins now a badge of honour. I got fed up waiting so I had to tell them to “Fuck off” myself.
Eye likes are Mark 🙂
How much lower can the Labour Party sink? It’s already been destroyed by Starmer and Mandelson…..What is left?
Fish swim & the Rich fly.
Good morning the best of you. Labour is just dead! we need a knew party devoid of the broad church scab machine. I now just wonder what the SH Nazi will spew today?
Just getting his anti Corbyn rants in order and instructions from StarmerFuhrer.
Let’s expand an airport during a (manufactured) time of crisis for the whole airline industry. Yeah, sounds like a plan. Maybe they know something we don’t? 🤔
Wirral inittogether ……..You answered it yourself with the word “manufactured” .Things will get back to the new normal very soon now the population have learned to obay and the new draconian control measures come into force.
I think a little more cap doffing and looking at your feet will be in order.?
The award-winning filmmaker that RWLabour expelled simply for petitioning against the destruction of Liverpool’s ‘last piece of countryside’ shows us three things:
1 – Starmer and his right-wing ‘enterist’ gang are not ecologically responsible. Like Blair ‘n’ Brown before them, they serve the capitalist dynamic of The WEF, Klaus Schwab, the Trilateral Commission and the US ‘deep state’.
2 – the only effective opposition to the neoliberal ‘labourists’ that Starmer, Evans, Mendelson and co. represent are (some persisting) Labour Party Members who stay true to their socialist principles.
3 – In the twenty-first century, when our economic system has put the planet on ‘life support’, democratic socialism – the promotion of the rights and economic interests of ‘the Many’ – is no longer just “Red”. It is “RedGreen”.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Corby project and GE2019 voting numbers showed us this.
As poster Bazza told us (just two days ago):
“Labour vote in the last four general elections:
2010 Brown 8.6m.
2015 MILIBAND 9.3m.
2017 Corbyn 12.8m.
2019 Corbyn 10.2m.
(2019 BREXIT effect, two third of Labour seats in Leave areas – Right Wing Labour pushed for 2nd PV and electoral suicide).”
Just another one of the (tens/hundreds of) thousands the party’s either lost or booted out since smarmer shithoused his way to the leadership. But everything’s just fine & dandy in wee stevie world…
Anyone remaining and continuing to complain aren’t worth bothering about imo. There’s been a shitload of examples of how they’re being treated with more contempt than de piflle with his covid parties.
The message is simple – if you don’t like being treated like shite, don’t fucking pay them. Or help them. Or vote for them. They’re not there for you.
At least when you pay the toerags you get your money’s worth.
The issue for me would be the kangaroo way the Labour party has deteriorated in such a short space of time.The issue on airport expansion is another issue entirely especially for Labour councillors who should have the interests of the ordinary people at the heart of the planning process.I used to represent Reigate on Gatcom the Gatwick airport monitor and eviroment,polution and road traffic etc group.and at times the opposition was unbelievably tough usually from the Tory lobby who didnt want more runways more housing and more industry which came from expansion including noise and polution and traffic.I always in consultation with the TGWU .at that time considered job creation and housebuilding to add to the infrastructure of the Crawley \Horley \Horsham area which was when I arrived in the sixtys was a rural backwater with strawberry picking high on things to do…But the decision to ignore democracy and local opinion had to be balanced not driven through like we have in the Labour party now….I am glad I am out of it…and dont have to wade through the Tory gentry waiving plackards and spitting on us that dared to disobey the landed gentry of Surrey.
Joseph – Why did you stand down after only one term?
And Paul Mason and Momentum urge members ‘Stay & fight’.
Their urging comes with an assumption there is an argument or debate to be won. Where is the argument or debate in the Labour party to ‘stay and fight’ over? Conference? Happily ignored by the leadership.
Neither the Tories or Labour allow policy debate. We as a people are basically just left electing glorified ‘red or blue’ management teams, and calling it representative democracy.
We desperately need proportional representation.
1000% behind your call for PR Andy.
I’m conflicted about the “stay and fight” tactic – but, give today’s MS Nick Wright article a read:
“FREE ADVICE is on offer. The latest comes from those impeccable sources of guidance, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and George Osborne’s London Evening Standard.
“These disinterested and impartial authorities are bigging up the idea that Jeremy Corbyn should start a new party.
“This despite the fact that the former Labour leader has expressed no such intention and no other Labour MP has endorsed the idea.
“However, there are thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people, who would find such an idea worth considering and are, with varying degrees of desperation, looking for viable course of action that is consistent with a new politics of the common interest.
“Elements on the Labour right think the damage it might do to Labour’s chances of forming a government is a price worth paying to rid the party of its left wing…..”
Rest here
As I said, I’m conflicted – but until we fix/bypass the synchronised MSM and FPTP, Labour is important to democratic socialists Andy.
Paul Mason is clearly worried that the left (stiil the vast bulk of the party’s vote) may use their votes wisely and upset this Starmer-led, New Labour 2.0, MSM assisted procession to power. He’s come out against Corbyn starting a new party – I’d imagine because he knows how vulnerable Starmer’s Labour will be if it supports a war, and outraged Labour voters look for an alternative.
He’s posting today about what Labour can achieve in its ‘2nd term’? He knows no one will believe it if he claims they’ll do anything major on the inequality front in their first.
Mason’s twitter output consists of gaslighting Labour members at this point. He used to be trusted figure on the left, but his continued forceful backing for Starmer gives him away. His twitter output is akin to NATO talking points for the most part, and he’s on record wanting big increases in UK defence spending and supports Trident. A very strange leftist indeed.
We also been to fir once and all bury the brad church mantra which merely serves to coerce rhe left into giving in to the right for the purpose of unity. Unity here describes the expectation that all happens as per expectatipn if rhe right. That must not continue to happen.
Paul Mason has gone from someone I listened to, to someone I actively distrust. I’m sure the CIA have a word for useful propagandists like him…
” A very strange leftist indeed.” He’s no longer a ‘leftist’. He’s a useful idiot to the CIA, no more ‘leftist’ than Sir Keir Rodney or Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.
Paskification works on many, many levels.
qwertboi-
Mason’s ‘How to Stop Fascism’ is published by Penguin Random House.
Quote:
‘Penguin Random House is one of the main publishers of books that reinforce US foreign policy objectives, like Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder, Collusion by Luke Harding, Red Famine by Anne Applebaum, Private Life Of Chairman Mao by Zhisui Li, The future Is History, by Masha Gessen and so forth. Thanks to PRH’s immense market share (and possibly help from state networks similar to the Integrity Initiative), they dominate book reviews and front windows in book shops. These titles get additional strength by being translated to almost every language in the world.’
Only one stay and Fight for me, that is to whip every goddamned Neoliberal Neo-Labour Party TORY SCUM’s seat from right under their arse, Stack em up in the corner Democrats Socialists will soon be needing them! If we use UK Labour Party as a wireframe and make use of ALL the existing CLPs, Members, Unions, etc We’ll be flying in no time.
So Many People seem to forget who these Celebrity types were, 2015 to 2020, and what they ALL DID, for a UK Labour Party Outcome in 2017 and 2019! It is shocking to see just how many of those skanks have been all is forgotten and forgiven ALL in the name of Entertainment and sadly these CNUTS carry a lot of clout on them, the SAD, ,VERY, VERY, SAD state of humanity!
EXC: Labour asks staff to accept a real-terms pay cut after revealing c. £3 million has been lost to falling membership and reduced trade union support.
Contrast this news to the alternate reality being presented in the MSM about ‘Special K’.
Imagine if Corbyn had presided over this near bankruptcy situation – the BBC political presenters would be like a dog with a bone. It almost makes you wonder if the press hammering of Johnson is taking over a party nearly two years ago, along with the Chinese spy story, isn’t some establishment attempt to prop their boy Sir Keir up, before May’s big electoral tests?
Andy, not only have they ‘Lost’ £3m in subs revenue, they are down to £800,000 in Donations from members too. They lost £13million, yes million, in Membership donations in 2019-2020.
They are literally bankrupt. Quite an achievement that in little over one year.
The connivance of the equally corrupt MSM will protect Starmer. For we don’t just have a controlled opposition, we’ve had a controlled MSM for some time.
There’s little doubt that the way things were going, Starmer could’ve been removed by a really bad set of results in May.
Then along comes ‘partygate’ – a story resurrected from nearly two years ago – coincidence or a lifeline for Starmer? A cynical view I’ll admit.
Johnson now at -52 net after a week of Corbyn-type tabloid bashing coverage.
Let’s face it, the press run the country, and he who controls the press(message) controls the country.
Andy – It wasn’t widely reported at the time but Corbyn did in fact preside over a very significant decline in the number of members. The membership figures below clearly illustrate this fact.
It is easy to get confused about the actual number of members because the figures that Labour usually publish include members who are up to 6mths in arrears, The following article published in Jul19 provides a rare insight into the breakdown of these figures.
Fortunately the various internal elections provide an accurate count of fully paid up members who are entitled to vote. I have listed these official Labour party figures below. These figures are accurate and tell their own story.
Labour’s membership has dipped below half a million after tens of thousands quit the party, PoliticsHome can reveal.
Official figures put the total at just under 485,000 down from a peak of 564,000 at the end of 2017.
That includes around 35,000 supporters whose subscriptions are in arrears, meaning the party now has around 450,000 fully paid-up members.
The 14% drop in membership comes against a backdrop of dissatisfaction by many in the party at Jeremy Corbyn�s approach to Brexit and anti-semitism.
A senior Labour MP said the party’s budget was based on an assumption that the number of paying members would not fall below 500,000. It’s the biggest annual fall in our history admittedly from a huge base and it will only get worse.
Glen O’Hara, Professor of Contemporary History at Oxford Brookes University, said: The decline in official membership is very big 14% or so in just 18 months.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/excl-labour-membership-dips-below-half-a-million-as-tens-of-thousands-leave-party
NEC elections are very useful for giving us accurate membership numbers, as under the rules only paid up members get to vote. NEC election electorate numbers give us the most clear picture of committed membership at each point they are held. Recent numbers are as follows:
July 2017 – 538,606
November 2017 – 525,779
June 2018 – 506,320
November 2019 – 430,359
January 2020 – 552,835
August 2020 – 495,961
They’ve now expelled most of the Wavertree Left. If y’remember Skwarky, I warned some years ago, ‘coming your way soon’ referring to the duplicitous creatures infesting the LP. I warned that they’ve no respect for democracy, with a hatred for the ideals of socialism as much as any fascist. It started in Wavertree.
Thanks for that potatoclock
Different news
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2022/01/14/extinction-rebellion-activists-cleared-by-jury-over-rush-hour-train-protest/
Anybody seen this ? https://twitter.com/TheMattWain/status/1482009741807259655?s=20…….Labour Data third party company Tangent, employs ex Labour BICOM person to look after members data and loses it…..A tangled web of corruption, deceit and Israeli control of the Labour Party.
‘Decency is shown the door.
As Liverpool Council destroys it’s climate strategy at a stroke.
Right Wing Labour Councils aren’t worth the effort.
And the little big men and women take the power for themselves as Liverpool’s environment it does choke!
Won’t vote for them!
Come on Liverpool Independent Socialists!
Take the power!
Can’t resist this one:
‘As a socialist I put my life on the line.
Facing the drunken, lumpen, Far Right.
But when I looked around at our side there wasn’t the JLM, BOD or Right Wing Labour, anywhere in sight!’
The Far Right try to divide diverse working people and are therefore the USEFUL IDIOTS of the rich and powerful!
Diverse Working People of the World Unite!