This is the text of an email, plus the attachments, I have just sent to Iain McNicol, and cc’d to the Labour Party NEC.

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Dear Iain

I am a Labour member in Tottenham, Haringey. It has become clear that several Labour members, including Labour councillors from Momentum, plus Haringey Momentum as an organistion, have worked with activists from hard left, and explicitly anti Labour, groups to run a highly coordinated mass deselection campaign against any Labour councillor not officially backed by Momentum. This suggests infiltration of our Party’s internal political processes by members of opposition groups, with the full support and facilitation of Haringey Momentum. Key members of Haringey Momentum have, at the same time, been in control of Labour’s selection process in the borough through holding key positions on the LCF.

The campaign, which has for months, attacked the Labour council, Labour group policy, the Labour Leader in Haringey, and the Labour councillors who are not backed by Momentum, is online at StopHDV.com and @StopHDV. This campaign is, ostensibly at least, against the Labour council’s plans for major regeneration of the more deprived parts of Haringey. Leaving aside, for now, the inherently non-Labour essence of a campaign to derail a regeneration plan which would be of the greatest benefit the poorest people in our borough, it is the coordinated attacks on Labour, and the involvement of Momentum Labour activists and councillors, about which I am emailing you, the General Secretary of the Labour Party, today.

Stop HDV and Momentum have run a joint campaign of mass deselections of Labour councillors across Haringey

I have attached three documents, showing that this is a jointly run deselection campaign by Stop HDV and Momentum. You will see that the attached literature from the two groups has identical content, including on how to vote in Labour selections. If this is not a joint campaign, how could identical literature have come about? If it is a joint campaign, with it’s relentless attacks on Labour in Haringey and it’s campaign of mass deselections of Labour councillors, how is it within the rules of the Labour Party for Labour members and councillors to have helped to run it?

StopHDV.com was set up by a member of the SWP, and is co-run by a writer for ‘Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, who has called the Labour council’s regeneration scheme, ‘ethnic cleansing’.

The website was set up by an SWP activist, whose name is on the domain registration page (attached). The others who have publicly said they run it, are a Labour/Momentum activist, and a writer for Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, who has called the Labour council’s regeneration plan ‘ethnic cleansing’. There remains very little information on the website about who runs the campaign. No names of a Steering Committee, organising committee, no Chair, Secretary, contact person, no information about who runs and edits the website, the twitter feed, who writes the literature, who approves the literature, who prints the literature and so on. This group has claimed to be speaking for the community, but all we know for certain is that it was set up by at least three hard left activists, two of whom are now also in the Labour Party, and that it has worked jointly with Haringey Momentum on this campaign against the Labour council, and for mass deselections of Labour councillors.

How was Momentum involved in running this campaign?

The identical literature (attached) proves that this is a joint campaign, yet it is very difficult to find information about who runs and makes decisions for Momentum in Haringey. We don’t know who (individuals or a group) from Momentum decided to run the joint campaign with Stop HDV, who decided which candidates should be formally backed by Momentum and Stop HDV, how Haringey Momentum decided who should be supported in each wards, and we don’t know how this information was given, far before the shortlisting meetings, to the ‘independent’ campaign, Stop HDV. None of the questions have been answered.

Have Labour members and councillors, who have co-run this campaign, broken Labour Party rules? 

Anyone can join a campaign against anything. That’s not in dispute. What is in dispute, is whether Labour members and Labour councillors, can, within the rules of the Labour Party, jointly run a campaign with anti-Labour activists, including a website, twitter, facebook, and leaflets, which relentlessly attacks the Labour council, the Labour leader, Labour councillors, and Labour policy, and which has run a campaign of mass deselections against any Labour councillor not explicitly backed by Momentum.  (I have attached one relevant Labour Party rule. I’m sure there are more.)

Given the Labour selection procedures have been run by a Momentum dominated LCF, are we being asked to accept that activists from the same organisation can run an objective selection procedure, and a highly targeted mass deselection campaign at the same time? With this in mind, it is worth reading the statements of Labour councillors who have withdrawn or been deselected. E.g. this one, this one, this one. There are more.

Intervention from the Labour Party

The central Labour Party must surely intervene, investigate, suspend and potentially void the selection process undertaken so far, and – far from ‘re-running the process’, as Jon Lansman has somewhat disingenuously suggested – if Labour wants to save the Party from a full takeover by the organised Hard Left, it must suspend those in Labour, including Labour councillors and office holders, who have been involved in running (not supporting, running) this campaign, expel those who have relentlessly attacked Labour councillors, including accusing them of supporting ‘ethnic cleansing’, remove the running of the selection process from an LCF in Haringey that is dominated by Momentum, and impose Labour candidates, from across the traditional spectrum of the Labour Party, and not those who simply represent one faction against the entire rest of the Labour movement.

It may be that you are by now sadly powerless to act on this information, and that it is all far too late for the Labour Party. However, if Labour has any fight left in it, any real will or way to save itself from simply becoming a vehicle for the organised Hard Left to take power, it has to act. This is not about one borough, it is about the fundamental heart and soul of the Labour Party, and whether it has the strength left to defend itself. As the saying goes, if not now, when?

Yours sincerely,

 

Nora Mulready

Tottenham Labour member

Cc: Labour Party NEC

 

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If anyone wants to help, please email Iain to let him know you would support him taking action over this. Email – iain_mcnicol@labour.org.uk