Labour MP and councillor deny claims they were pair named in Kennedy Report
Union figures have alleged that Ilford North MP Sam Tarry and Croydon Councillor Chris Clark are the pair of TSSA employees criticised by Baroness Kennedy’s scathing report on sexual harassment in the union.
Page thirteen of the report describes a conversation in which two male colleagues were laughing about sexual harassment by then-general secretary Manuel Cortes – and goes on to note that a female employee who reported the conversation was criticised for it.
Both men have denied being the parties named. Tarry, a member of the union’s senior management team until he became an MP, did not respond directly to a request for comment. However, a spokesperson provided Skwawkbox with a statement:
That claim is inaccurate.
There is no mention of me whatsoever in the report. I came forward to give evidence to Helena Kennedy’s investigation, and cooperated with it.
I strongly dispute any suggestions of my involvement in the toxic culture outlined in the Kennedy report.
I support in full its recommendations and send my solidarity to those fighting for justice for TSSA staff and members.
To be clear I condemn, in no uncertain terms the disgraceful behaviours outlined in it.
Clark initially told Skwawkbox that he had no recollection of being part of such a conversation. He then provided a statement:
I was saddened and appalled to read the findings of the Kennedy Report. I consider sexist behaviour and sexual harassment in the workplace to be completely unacceptable, and I reject any suggestion that I have made light of what is such a serious subject. I welcome the union’s commitment to make the cultural changes that are needed as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
As a consequence of Kennedy’s report and recommendations, members of TSSA’s senior management have resigned and others have been suspended pending a decision on their future.
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Sam Tarry, isn’t that the guy who Keir sacked from the shadow cabinet and who was subsequently triggered and deselected by his own CLP. How’s his search for another CLP to adopt him as their PPC going.
Ffs fuck off you malevolent, malignant piece of fascist shit.
Thanks
Allan – Temper, temper.
What’s your problem, was what I said above in any way inaccurate?
Allan. Don’t feed it.
Even when it’s occasionally useful. Manners no longer apply to the dead.
Enjoy your weekend
Why did Keir sack Sam Tarry, from his Shadow Cabinet?
Sam Tarry isn.t that guy who Heir Starmer sacked why didnt he sack stab in your front and back racist Phillips/or streeting for racist abuse towards D/A All that front bench are corrupt cowards fucking scum politicians
“Sam Tarry, isn’t that the guy who Keir sacked from the shadow cabinet and who was subsequently triggered and deselected by his own CLP. How’s his search for another CLP to adopt him as their PPC going.”
WELL, isn’t it strange that both a SCG MP recently targeted for desection by the party’s leader in name only, and ‘a dedicated antifascist activist, … a trade union rep and a seasoned campaigner to bring Britain’s railway network into public ownership’ are the particular objects of this slur?
I think it is; and also that it’s more than likely a situation choreographed by the wretched centrists currently in control of, and intent on denaturing the Labour party.
Sacked for standing with workers and deselected in a rigged contest to replace him with someone with sexual assault allegations whitewashed against legal advice. Great.
against legal advice.
But but but…keef
KNOWSIS the law…I thought he was sacked for going rogue and making up policy on the fly whilst giving unauthorised interviews to TV crews
I don’t often comment re these articles which are usually interesting even if I’m not always in agreement with the piece or subsequent comments but the response by ‘Allan Howard’ is disgraceful and disgusting. Why does a respectable publication like Skwawkbox tolerate and even encourage such abuse?
Oh look, Plain Citizen just happens to be up at three in the morning and just happened to come on to Skwawkbox! What a joke. But then the fascist shill who calls himself SteveH has no doubt got dozens of secondary personas, some that he uses fairly regularly, and others that he uses occasionally. As if ANYONE who follows Skwawkbox doesn’t know that SteveH is a full-time paid establishment black propagandist troll/shill. Oh, but Plain Citizen sticks up for a fascist piece of shit who supports a bunch of fascists who now run and control the LP and are expelling left-wingers en masse on bogus grounds!
As I said in a recent post, no-one on this planet spends every day of every week of every month posting comments and replies in practically every thread for years and years. Unless you’re a full-time paid shill, that is!
I’m not Steve H. I looked at the article as I was relaxing after just getting home. Please stop this ridiculous abusive ranting.
Well put Howard
Much like you ‘Plain Citizen’ ‘I don’t often comment but do usually find comments interesting and informative , even if I don’t agree with them. Likewise, I try never to use abusive language online, but believe me I sympathise with ‘Allan Howard’ on this one. The contributor in question thrives on snide remarks and usually detracts from the current topic. Their endless comments of this type, rather than abusive language from other contributors, has actually put me off reading comments sometimes (although for some reason s/he has been absent quite a lot of late, I wonder why…) and would make a bloody saint swear! I do wonder why they come on here as clearly they are totally opposed to the ethos of ‘Skwawkbox’ add little to any constructive debate, and their attempts to convert the majority here to their ’cause’ woeful.
If you bear in mind that since two or three months ago about half the articles posted by Steve Walker don’t have a Comments section, then the number of comments and replies SteveH posts has obviously decreased, but I just went to close one tab with a skwawkbox article on it from a few days ago, and out of the forty comments posted, guess who posted TWENTY of them!
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/02/10/exclusive-tssa-suppressed-earlier-merger-approach-from-rmt-too/
And talking of malignant and malevolent people….. At the beginning of September 2016 Ruth Smeeth claimed she had received 25,000 abussive messages, and they were all made ‘in Jeremy Corbyn’s name’, a lifelong anti-racist. She was of course lying through her nasty fascist teeth. Here’s a clip from the Huff Post who, along with the rest of the MSM, covered it and pretended that they believed her:
Labour MP Ruth Smeeth Targeted By ‘25,000 Abusive Messages In Jeremy Corbyn’s Name’
Ruth Smeeth said this morning she had received 25,000 pieces of abuse since the end of June alone – with 20,000 coming in just one 12-hour period.
The 12-hour period she was referring to in which she supposedly received 20.000 abusive messages was in the hours after the meeting where the episode with Mark Wadsworth happened at the end of June, some nine/ten weeks earlier. Needless to say, if anyone received even TWO thousand abusive messages in the space of twelve hours (after an episode that was covered by the whole of the MSM), let alone TWENTY thousand, you would of course have been straight on to the MSM the very next day about it (and it would of course have been headline news). Oh, right, but she didn’t, and only mentions it some nine/ten weeks later.
As if! The only abusive messages she received – if ANY – were by the so-called intelligence services – ie MI5 and the so-called Integrity Initiative. Funny, isn’t it, that the police didn’t manage track any of the abusers down, and hardly EVER do!
I wonder why???:
I met Ruth Smeeth once. I would not recommend it.
Election night 2019 was quite a depressing experience. But amid all the gloom, came the news that she had been unseated. In an interview, she blamed Jeremy Corbyn. Perhaps she was genuinely unaware that Corbyn had been leader in 2017 also.
More info on Ruth Smeeth:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Ruth_Smeeth
Tony, you’ve gotta look for the silver lining. Was she angry, sad, broken because she had her role, advancing the interests of the working class taken away? Or was she overjoyed that Jeremy had lost? Were tissues on exes?
Thanks for the wikispooks link. Wow, index on censorship,a scurvy crew.
I thought Tarry was going go legal against being fraudulently deselected and he had his Union behind him
So did I, but that was months ago. Perhaps having taken legal advice Tarry has had a change of heart.
Re: Julia18/02/2023 AT 8:52 AM
I have never fathomed out how to register a “like” on comments, so I’ll say “well said” here.
I have a different perspective on your comment regarding one contributor seeking to convert people to “their cause”. I suspect that many, if not the great majority, of their comments are designed to infuriate people and elicit reactions like those of Allan Howard, and such reactions give him the chance to stir things up even more.
So let’s leave such stuff behind.
I can’t see this thread going much further, so I’ll bring us around to the most significant of current world events – the conflict in Ukraine. I keep discovering new perspectives from people who are well-qualified to comment. Here’s one from Lee Slusher:
https://deepdivewithleeslusher.substack.com/p/rubble-and-rhetoric
It may be useful to know who Mr Slusher is, so I’ll post a link to such information.
Here’s some information about Mr Slusher:
https://www.lee-bt.com/
click the star (to the left of the word ‘Like’) and if you’re recognised by the WordPress robot-cookies it deposits on your device, you’ll register a Like.
Thanks for the advice. I just tried it, but it asked me for a username and I don’t know what that refers to. Never mind.
it’s referring to your wordpress user name (which shld be same as your skwawkbx user name) ‘goldbach’?
I enjoyed the Lee Slusher article gb, thanks.
Tried that and it didn’t work. Thanks for trying to assist.
I’m better with the fountain pen.
Really interesting article by Slusher. Well thought out and backed up with evidence. Thanks for the link. He’s right about UK forces and the rest of Europe’s. No brains and no bullets.
It sounds like a right-wing smear. All of those named in the Kennedy report are Starmerites, so they went liking for a dead cat and decided smearing Tarry would get more column inches, and Starmer needed an excuse to suspend him and get him off the PPC list
Caroline – On the contrary it was Tarry’s own PLP that ousted him. Where were ‘the left’?
as many have said here many times, maybe they were some of the large number of ‘dearly departed’?
AND when enough left-leaning liberals and democratic socialists leave a labour party, the aforementioned party is as dead as a doornail.
Starmer will be long-gone by the time Labour next gets the chance to repair itself (if ever). His effect – his legacy – will be to put Labour into an electoral and political coma.
qwertboi – Why was Tarry disliked by the majority of the members in his constituency, all 10 of Tarry’s CLP branches voted to ‘trigger’ him.
396 (66%) out of a total of the 596 members who cast a vote during the ‘trigger’ process voted against Tarry.
Did any of you take part in today’s demo in Liverpool by ‘Refugees Welcome Here’.
If you enjoyed the Lee Slusher article, you might find this assessment of Trump and the permanent state to be an interesting analysis.
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/15/trump-empire-they-hated-him/
You might also wish to see evidence that, unlike here in the UK, some elected politicians in the US are starting to express views contrary to those of the neocons:
https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-delivers-national-security-speech-china-and-ukraine-time-truth
“unlike here in the UK, some elected politicians in the US are starting to express views contrary to those of the neocons”
Indeed! A secondary benefit to the Keir Starmer and the Establishment’s incessant belittlement and smearing of JC and his stop the war/evidence-based values was ‘pour encourager les autres’.
The massive covid lie and the psy-ops it facilitated must have played a part in it too..
n0othing to say on Sir Comatose Starmer’s effect on the once-Labour party?
With Macron talking about how he was right about not trying to bring about “regime change” in Moscow and Scholz clearly annoyed at being conned into providing tanks and having his pipelines blown up by his “allies”, we now have some in the US indicating that they can’t keep on supplying weapons beyond the summer.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/02/16/on-ukraine-is-biden-signaling-that-as-long-as-it-takes-may-have-an-end-date/
Looks like it could be all over this year.
Why don’t they just negotiate and bring an end to it before Spring?
Mind you, with the history of lies, it would be surprising if the Russians trusted anything they said.
Interesting to see reporting and analysis from the Global South.
Stuff we never hear of un the UK.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/blinken-gets-bibi-to-bend-on-ukraine/