Vox Political: 3 Pro-Corbyn Labour Councillors Purged in Bristol

This is another story about the anti-Corbyn shenanigans in Bristol. A few weeks ago one of the city’s Labour MPs, Thangam Debonnaire, attacked Jeremy Corbyn. Now the local Labour party has purged three councillors, who support the Labour leader. They are Harriet Bradley, the councillor for Brislington West, Mike Langley, of Brislington East, and Hibaq Jama of Lawrence Hill. As a result of these purges, the local party has destroyed its slim majority on Bristol city council. They used to have 37 councillors. Now that they’ve purged these three, it’s gone down to three.

Mike asks the obvious question: what kind of politician destroys their own party’s majority in a major city council, simply out of spite against a leader they don’t like? He states that it’s exactly the type of behaviour he criticised the NEC for in a previous article, and state that the people responsible must be named, shamed and disciplined. They’ve harmed the Labour group on the council and made the party the subject of ridicule and disrepute. He states very clearly: Not in my name.

Labour loses its majority on Bristol City Council after Corbyn supporters are purged

The I newspaper adds a few more details to the story. It states that

Bristol was one of the success stories of Mr Corbyn’s mixed local election results earlier this year, with the party taking over the mayoralty and controlling it alongside the elected council for the first time since the post’s creation…

Labour’s national office said it does not comment on the reasons why people are suspended from the party. The Bristol City Council Labour group whip Christopher Jackson confirmed the councillors had had their whips removed “as per the usual”.

The three councillors could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

The paper also quotes a Labour spokesman as saying

“The Labour party has a robust validation process for all votes to ensure every vote cast is eligible in keeping with the Labour Party rules.”

This affects me as a Bristolian. My local councillor was one of those, who signed a petition against Corbyn, so this purging of the three pro-Labour councillors basically tells me that the party does not want my support, or those of people like me, and regards they and me with fear and contempt. The party hasn’t given any reason why the three were purged. Simply trying to shrug it all off as ‘as per the usual’ is nowhere near sufficient. Quite honestly, I don’t think they have a good reason, just as they haven’t for all the 130,000 Labour party members Smudger and the NEC have purged.

I know I’m not going to be alone in being outraged by this. A few months ago there was a mass demo of Corbyn supporters on College Green outside the Library, Council House and Cathedral here in Bristol. The great man himself also appeared to address the crowd. But this has been too much for the Blairites on the local council. No doubt they will start cooking something up about the three having brought the party into disrepute through abusive emails, but the fact that Jackson just shrugged off demands for an explanation saying, ‘as per usual’ simply indicates that they’re so arrogant the Blairites can’t even be bothered to make up any kind of pretext for the purges. They just say, ‘the usual’, and hope the rest of us will swallow.

We’re not. I’m very tempted to write a letter to the local Labour party complaining about this and demanding an explanation. I do not want to see the Labour party in my city taken over by people, who are Tories in all but name, and who, as Blairites, are complicit in supporting his privatisation of the NHS, the welfare cuts, the work capability test and all the rest of the foul policies Blair introduced to grind the working people of this country down so he could get votes from ‘aspirational’ – read, ‘snobbish and embittered’ ex-Tory voters.

Tags: 'I' Newspaper, 'The Independent', Benefit Cuts, Brislington East, Brislington West, Bristol Cathedral, Bristol Central Library, Christopher Jackson, College Green, Conservatives, Harriet Bradley, Hibaq Jama, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Lawrence Hill, Local Council, Mike Langley, NEC, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Owen Smith, Party Whip, Purges, Thangam Debonnaire, Work Capability Test, Working Class