“What was, in effect, a kind of court hearing resulted in the suspension from the Labour group for two months of four councillors.”
By a Hackney Labour Party Member
As February ended, the ruling Labour group at Lambeth Council meted out punishment to four of its councillors for daring to defy instructions from Chief Whip Scarlett O’Hara to oppose a Green Party motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza at Lambeth’s January meeting. The councillors sanctioned include the Jewish socialist Martin Abrams, who now faces indefinite suspension from the London borough’s Labour group. While the Lambeth suspensions have garnered some national media interest, including mention on the BBC’s Question Time, other Labour groups have also witnessed hard-line enforcement of the whip.
Six nights before the special meeting of Lambeth’s Labour group voted to suspend the four councillors, a similar meeting took place in Hackney. Convened with barely a week’s notice, the 20 February gathering of Hackney’s 49 Labour councillors, recently elected executive mayor Caroline Woodley and the executive of the Local Campaign Forum with regional officials also in attendance last more than four hours. What was, in effect, a kind of court hearing resulted in the suspension from the Labour group for two months of four councillors: Fliss Premru from Clissold ward in Hackney North & Stoke Newington constituency and Clare Joseph, Claudia Turbet-Delof and Penny Wrout, all of whom represent Victoria ward in Hackney South & Shoreditch.
And what “crimes” had the four committed to warrant such a sanction? On 29 November last year the four along with five other Labour councillors had allegedly defied Chief Whip Kam Adams’ instructions to oppose two procedural motions designed to secure a debate at that evening’s full Council meeting of a Gaza ceasefire motion from the borough’s two Green councillors calling. Four of those five received warning letters from the Chief Whip, while one other backbencher has yet to face an investigative interview due to ill health. Another councillor who abstained has faced no further action.
At the 29 November meeting Mayor Woodley had earlier sought to argue that the Council didn’t have a foreign policy and debating a ceasefire would potentially harm “community relations”. Ironically, the Council’s 24 January meeting did eventually debate and adopt a ceasefire motion, albeit diluted – by Labour amendments – of the Greens’ original proposal.
But the four suspended representatives had the temerity to “transgress” on another matter that evening. Green councillors had called for a much wider “independent investigation” than the Council had commissioned in the wake of the Tom Dewey scandal, which eventually cost the previous executive mayor, Phil Glanville, his job. The now disgraced Dewey, who eventually entered a guilty plea last July to multiple counts relating to his possession of nearly 2,000 online images of child sexual abuse, was a Hackney councillor for all of 11 days in May 2022.
The Chief Whip moved to block the Green motion and without the usually required notice he proposed that the Council’s Monitoring Officer review whether the motion was valid, given the recently completed report into the Council’s handling of the Dewey affair. Not surprisingly the Labour group leadership is keen to bury the matter, which led to Glanville’s resignation as mayor after a damning selfie revealed he had lied about contact with Dewey after learning of the criminal allegations. In hosting a small party with Dewey in attendance on 14 May 2022, the ex-mayor brushed aside the explicit advice of the Council’s then Chief Executive Mark Carroll.
Glanville’s resignation led to a mayoral by-election in November where Labour’s vote share plunged by nearly 10 percentage points with barely a fifth of the electorate participating. Caroline Woodley’s still clear-cut victory triggered another by-election for her previous seat in Cazenove ward, where Labour suffered a crushing defeat. The chaotic campaign saw Labour’s candidate suspended over allegedly transphobic and racist social media posts six days prior to the election and then reinstated the night before the poll.
The sanctions imposed on the “Hackney Four” are, of course, less severe than those facing their Lambeth colleagues. But the 20 February meeting heard proposals to extend the suspensions from two to three months, which were narrowly defeated. Whether there will be further attempts to marginalise the four in coming months remains to be seen.
The four suspended Hackney councillors, all of whom have worked diligently to support ward residents, intend to appeal against their suspensions to the Party’s London regional executive. There are certainly legitimate questions regarding due process and the imposition of the whip without adequate prior discussion in the Group, but ultimately these councillors should attract support for standing by their principles. They have done so against the background of unending human suffering on a monumental scale in Gaza and an attempt by other politicians to draw a curtain over the wilful mishandling of a child sex abuse case involving an ex-councillor on the Party’s right.
Such draconian internal disciplinary measures come at a time when local authorities across Britain face the prospect of implementing still further cuts and highlight the urgent need for meaningful co-ordination among remaining councillors on the Labour left.
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