Kensington Labour Party finally released a statement calling for a ceasefire in Palestine, over three weeks after local councillors wrote a first draft, and only after the criminal government of Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed to a temporary truce. Multiple Labour councillors have told Urban Dandy that interventions from local and regional Labour officials delayed the release of the statement and ensured the local party did not contradict and embarrass Labour leader Keir Starmer and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy who have backed Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. We have obtained the Kensington councillors’ original statement, which bears little resemblance to the published version, adding to the evidence of a crackdown on internal democracy and a prioritisation of Israeli government interests under Starmer.
Original Statement
The original statement drafted by the Kensington Labour councillors was ready for publication on 7th November. In contrast with the version published three weeks later, the original is clear that Israel is responsible for the genocide it is carrying out. This put the Kensington group of councillors in alignment with international law as Israel has no right to use violence against a population that it occupies.Continue reading →
Kensington Labour Party appears to be avoiding public accountability over its refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Activists arranged a protest to be held outside Kensington Unitarian Church tonight, where the constituency party was due to meet. Labour has now switched its meeting to take place online .
With national, regional and local party bosses backing Israel’s policy in Palestine, the Labour group of councillors have come under scrutiny. Having agreed a statement opposing Israel’s crimes over two weeks ago, the group has failed to publish the document, which was expected to distance the Kensington group from the party’s de facto support for Israeli genocide
In an email sent to local members and seen by Urban Dandy, the party blames “unforeseen circumstances” for the cancellation of the in-person meeting. One of the speakers at the online meeting will be from GMB, the trade union that issued a statement two weeks after Israel had launched its massacre, carefully avoided naming Netanyahu’s apartheid government as the perpetrator.
Israel has no right under international law to use violence against the population it occupies and subjugates.
Kensington & Bayswater Constituency Labour Party supports Israel’s genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip, reflecting the national Labour Party’s stance. But local Labour councillors are not obliged to support genocide and are free to resign from the party in protest or to speak out as a group. Why aren’t they?
Just one local Labour councillor, Mona Ahmed, has resigned in protest at Keir Starmer’s “endorsement of war crimes committed by Israel against civilians in Gaza.” Cllr Ahmed was Deputy Leader of the Labour Group in Kensington.
If other councillors want to oppose ethnic cleansing but not resign the whip, their other option is to speak out together to distance themselves from Starmer’s foreign policy. A source informed Urban Dandy that a statement to that effect was agreed between all Kensington Labour councillors on Monday 6th November.
But the statement, which calls for an immediate ceasefire, has remained unreleased. The issue was not that the statement was deemed too controversial. According to our source, some councillors pushed for a hard line against Israel and its crimes, while others were keen to appease national Labour officials and London Region officials who have effectively run the local party for the past 12 months.
The upshot is acquiescence from Labour in Kensington over Israel’s slaughter and a signal that Palestinian lives do not matter. At a vigil for Gaza and the victimes of the Grenfell Tower fire on Tuesday 14th November, several speakers called out the Labour Group’s silence.
Cllr Ali
The Leader of the Labour Group, Kasim Ali, is ultimately responsible for the non-publication of the statement. Last year, Ali’s candidacy to be Kensington’s next Member of Parliament was torpedoed by Labour officials who racially profiled British Somali party members to prevent them from voting for their preferred candidate. The same Labour officials also concocted an ‘antisemitism’ scandal to justify taking full control of the selection process, ensuring Ali could not win.
Despite this abusive treatment, Cllr Ali remained loyal to Labour and was elected Leader of the Kensington Group of councillors. Cllr Ali has not confirmed to us whether he is withholding the Gaza statement at the request of the London Region officials.
As we revealed last month, Kensington Labour Party was forced by London Region to disaffiliate from a raft of anti-war groups earlier this year. These included Stop the War Coalition; Peace & Justice Project; Jewish Voice for Labour and Palestine Solidarity Campaign, four organisations that have been prominent leaders in the huge protests against Israel’s killing in recent weeks.
Liberal fascism is trending in Britain, marked by a crackdown on dissenting voices. The Labour Party is keeping pace with the times; Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership has turned Labour into the liberal wing of a Uni-party that runs Britain in the interests of the global financial system and at the expense of the rest of us. Kensington Labour Party has succumbed, surrendering its power to a system of myopic control managed by zealots, liars, and racists. How did Kensington’s red flag fade to pinkish blue so quickly?
The Pivot: Labour’s Racism Report
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour became associated with antisemitism in the public consciousness thanks to a determinedsmear campaignsome of the country’s most powerful institutions waged against the anti-racist Islington MP. Aleaked reportdetails the workings of a racist, sexist, right-wing clique operating at the highest levels of Labour’s governance during the Corbyn era, collaborating to prevent the party from forming a government under the veteran socialist. Upon replacing Corbyn, Keir Starmer recruited the independent barrister Martin Forde KC to investigate the leak, asking Forde to identify the changes required within Labour to eradicate discrimination.
Having considered 1,100 submissions from party members, Forde confirmed both “overt and underlying racism and sexism” at the highest levels of the party, noting “the particular disdain which colleagues reserve for ethnic minority MPs, councillors and CLP members”. The barrister described “a hierarchy of racism or of discrimination with other forms of racism (other than antisemitism) and discrimination being ignored. For a party which seeks to be a standard bearer of progressive politics, equality and workers’ rights, this is an untenable situation.”
Forde criticised Labour’s refusal, under Starmer, to engage withJewish Voice for Labour’s proposals for antisemitism education, reporting that Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) had been barred from engaging with that organisation despite their obvious expertise.
Labour’s website summarises the Forde Report’s key recommendation: “The report urges the Party to treat all forms of discrimination among staff, elected officials and the wider membership with the same seriousness as incidents of antisemitism.”
David Evans, General Secretary of the party since 2020, responded to Forde by offering “a commitment to you and all other members that such a situation will not arise again and that we will tackle racist and discriminatory attitudes wherever they arise in whatever section of the party.”
Following the report, Labour created a Diversity & Inclusion Board chaired by a trans person. In 2021, the party established codes of conduct on Islamophobia, Afrophobia and anti-Black racism. Meetings were slated for early 2023 to establish aworking groupto consider the Forde Report. But in May this year Fordelamentedthe lack of action, saying his work will be rendered pointless unless the recommendations are implemented. The barrister said Labour was still prioritising antisemitism and the Me Too movement at the expense of other forms of discrimination.
Kensington Takeover
Labour and the media have largely ignored Forde’s recommendations and the problems of discrimination have become far worse than the “hierarchy of racism” the barrister described. Under Starmer, Labour has turned its back on vulnerable communities and deployed a strategy of deliberately provoking fear among Jewish communities to create moral justifications for party officials to siphon off decision-making powers from the party’s membership. In Kensington, the effect has been both surreal and chilling.
Local Candidates Removed
As wereportedlate last year, unelected party officials hijacked the selection process for Labour’s Kensington candidacy. First, members of the National Executive Committeebarredthe probable winner, former MP Emma Dent Coad, from standing on spurious grounds including having once made ajokeabout Prince Harry. Labour’s London Region bosses then intervened,eliminatingthe new favourite to win, another grassroots candidate, Kasim Ali. London Region bureaucrats then took fullcontrolof the selection process, declaring branch results without publishing vote counts.
These events passed without protest from the CLP’s members, who have not raised concerns about the process at any subsequent meetings. The usurping of party democracy in Kensington came after the publication of the Forde Report and Evans’s “commitment” to anti-racism, yet a method senior Labour officials employed to rig the Kensington selection was the manufacture of anantisemitism crisis. Out of nowhere, an email was circulated to CLP members featuring clumsy antisemitic language. The party’s London Region Director, Pearleen Sangha capitalised on the email, declaring that CLP members had been suspended and stating that there would be a “serious investigation” into antisemitism in Kensington CLP.
To remove Kasim Ali from the running, Sangha took sole control of the vote at Ali’s home branch. She summarily removed up to 20 British Somalis (the same ethnic background as Ali) from the meeting, preventing them from casting their votes. Is this a party serious about Islamophobia, Afrophobia and anti-Black racism? To date, there have been no complaints made about this incident of prima facie racial profiling at CLP meetings and we understand the CLP has not submitted a complaint to the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).
We wrote to London Region multiple times offering them opportunities to retract Sangha’s claims of suspensions and an investigation into antisemitism, but they stuck by her story each time. Kensington CLP officials immediately confirmed to us that there were no suspensions and no investigation, reconfirming this prior to the change in the CLP’s leadership in February. The current CLP Secretary, Monica Press, confirmed to us that there have been no suspensions or investigations relating to alleged antisemitism during her tenure.
Despite it being an established fact that Labour officials created an antisemitism hoax in Kensington, and despite what appears to be, at the very least, a case of targeted discrimination against Black, African, Muslim British-Somalis, there have been no consequences for the officials responsible or for the party as a whole. And Labour members in Kensington, apparently decent and liberal-minded, have remained mute as officials have disenfranchised their comrades. Some are dissonantly focused on the campaign to unseat Conservative MP Felicity Buchan while others fear that speaking up would mean expulsion from the party.
Affiliations Cancelled
More of the same is incoming. When Diane Abbott used clumsy language to point out the indisputable fact that anti-Black racism is far more prevalent throughout our society than antisemitism, anti-Irish, anti-traveller or anti-red head discrimination, Starmer immediately labelled her words “antisemitic.” Like Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott is no longer a Labour MP, and any semblance of left-wing presence in parliament is now in doubt in a country in which millions of people hold socialist values.
In Kensington, as with constituencies around the country, central control has increased with members’ power decreasing in direct proportion. Under Starmer Labour has amended its rules so CLP members no longer have a democratic choice over which comradely organisations they can affiliate to. We have seen an email from a London Region official to Kensington CLP stating that the CLP’s affiliate organisations must be pre-approved by the NEC, not according to a robust set of criteria, but solely based on “the opinion of the NEC”.
In emails seen by us, parliamentary candidate Joe Powell outlined the affiliation rule change to CLP officials, listing the grassroots organisations that were to be disaffiliated at the CLP’s February AGM including Palestine Solidarity Campaign; Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Stop the War Coalition; Republic; Jewish Voice for Labour; Somalis for Labour; Sikhs for Labour; All African Women’s Group and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project. A London Region official also wrote to CLP officers warning that affiliating to any of the above organisations would breach party rules.
All requests for affiliations are now considered by just two senior regional party officials, but one of them pre-empted any such requests by telling Kensington CLP to focus their resources on campaigning for their parliamentary candidate, as opposed to building a broader labour movement.
Kensington members elected officers amenable to the Starmer project, marking a significant turnaround from 2021 when the chair Monica Press resigned from her councillor position citing factional bullying by a small group of left-wing councillors who were then dominant in the CLP. But the votes cast at the February AGM did not mark a renewal of democracy and the authoritarians continued to consolidate their grip.
Meetings Suspended
Labour officials have transformed Kensington from a CLP dominated by a small group of allegedly factional but elected left-wingers to one apparently under the control of unelected party bureaucrats. In July, without consulting its membership, the CLP’s executive committee announced the suspension of all branch meetings until February 2024, justified by low turnout at meetings and a need to focus on general election campaigning. In early 2024, the constituency will change its boundaries and become Kensington & Bayswater. The Executive will then decide whether to reinstate branch meetings or to continue their suspension until after the general election.
The CLP Executive also announced it has replaced All Member Meetings with bi-monthly ‘policy forums’, further reducing the ability of local members to engage in the party’s processes and influence policy. The NEC and London Region are expected to retain a close watch over proceedings.
The NEC is pursuinga rule changeto reduce CLP executive committees to just six positions. Presuming their proposal is successful, this will be another significant change for Kensington which currently has 15 committee members. Roles such as Environmental Officer, Political Education Officer, Disability Officer and BAME Officer are expected to be among those to be abolished.
Local Labour activists and politicians continue to campaign on some importantissues, some no doubt struggling to identify a means of organising that could replace the party’s apparatus. But these campaigns come in the context of a party that supports the World Economic Forum’s vision for our future: “You will own nothing, but you will be happy.”
Don’t Worry Be Happy
Looking from the outside at the chaos of first Emma Dent Coad and then Kasim Ali being removed from the running to be Labour’s Kensington parliamentary candidate, it seems likely that party officials were motivated by a fear that either politician might have been responsive to local demands around the economy, justice for Grenfell and an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and a major component of the Starmer project is to separate decision making from popular demands. At no point has the local membership resisted the takeover by the national party, and by the time Starmer is in number ten, it will be too late for grassroots members to have any influence on Labour’s policies.
The Starmer team’s disfiguring of Labour’s internal democratic apparatus is matched by its draconian worldview. The party is marching in ideological lockstep with sweeping state repression of our rights toprotestandfree speech(Keir Starmer had professionalinvolvementwith the initial harassment and persecution of Julian Assange.) Starmer declared unconditional loyalty toNATOandIsrael, aligning Labour’s foreign policy with the Tories’ and reversing the progress made under Corbyn.
Labour’s asphyxiated reactionary policy approach coincides with the Conservative party collapsing from within and a time when the country requires investment after 13 years of austerity. Some Kensington CLP members might believe the crackdown on party democracy is an election-winning strategy masterminded by Jeffery Epstein’sclose friendLord Mandelson. Others will see it for what it really is, part of the freezing out of workers’ concerns from parliamentary politics fortified by intense repression of free speech todemonise and proscribedissent.
Sir Keir Starmer was more culpable than any other politician for Labour’s 2019 election catastrophe. As Shadow Brexit Secretary, he defied party leaders and pursued a disastrous policy of cancelling the democratic Leave vote. Starmer’s sabotage went unpunished because Labour was desperate to preserve a façade of unity in the face of relentless lies and attacks from the media, and political and militaryestablishments. Starmer and his team have sought to sever the party’s connection to progressive and working-class causes. Cuckolds to war criminals like Tony Blair and the corrupt media class, Labour has moved decisively and ruthlessly to kill off pro-peace, pro-worker, anti-racist interests within its ranks. In Kensington, there has been no rage against the dying of the light.
Senior Labour Party officials repeatedly lied about antisemitism in the ranks of Kensington Labour Party, generating fear in Jewish communities and defaming the party’s local members to neuter democracy in the constituency. Under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer and General Secretary David Evans, unelected bureaucrats have been afforded dictatorial powers to subvert party rules, supplant local candidates and silence members. In Kensington, they have been ruthlessly effective.
In late 2022 we reported on senior Labour Party officials’ interventions in the democratic processes of Kensington Constituency Labour Party (CLP) to prevent local councillors from gaining the nomination to become the party’s candidate to challenge Conservative MP Felicity Buchan at the next general election. The National Executive Committee (NEC) and Greater London Region Labour Party both made interventions to ensure a candidate more aligned with the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer prevailed.
General Secretary David Evans, image from twitter / labtowin
NEC blocked Cllr Emma Dent Coad
In October, the NEC unilaterally removed Emma Dent Coad, the constituency’s only ever Labour MP, from the longlist of candidates. As part of a purge by Starmer’s leadership team of left-wing politicians and members, the NEC summoned Dent Coad to a “due diligence” interview. The three-person interview panel was chaired by a prominent NEC member who alone had the power to decide that Dent Coad should be excluded from the longlist for “bad judgement.” The former MP said that she had effectively been accused of “thoughtcrime”. Read full details and our interview with Emma Dent Coad here.
London Region took out Cllr Kasim Ali
In November, Councillor Kasim Ali led the CLP’s longlist branch votes when London Region suddenly intervened to prevent him from securing his place on the shortlist. The previous month, Pearleen Sangha, Director of London Region Labour Party, had accused two selection committee members of openly supporting a candidate. Sangha used the accusation as a pretext to take personal control of every aspect of the CLP’s selection process.
Ali had won the first of the three branch selection votes, requiring just one more branch victory to secure his place on the shortlist. This was when Sangha took over the remaining two branch meetings and votes.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that London Region’s move against Ali was pre-planned. First, Sangha postponed the North West branch (his home branch) vote, creating time for the concoction of a means to sabotage Kasim Ali. On the day of the North West vote, a dubious-looking email was circulated to CLP members attacking another candidate as a supporter of Israel. The email was immediately picked up by a local blog and Jewish News, with both publications using it to attackAli and his supporters as antisemites, despite there being no evidence of a connection between them and the email.
This was the pretext Sangha needed. With no checks and balances against her, the Regional Director blocked whomever she decided not to admit to the Zoom meetings, including up to 20 British Somali members at the North West Kensington Branch meeting. Sangha then kept the nomination results secret and declared the winners without reference to the members’ votes, keeping Kasim Ali off the shortlist.
image from linkedin / pearleensangha
Sangha’s Lies
On the day of the North West vote, following the antisemitism smear against Ali and the local membership, Sangha emailed CLP members regarding her “serious concerns” over apparent antisemitism in Kensington Labour Party. She stated that members had been suspended and that there would be a “serious investigation” into the antisemitism that had forced her to take over of the process.
In December we contacted Sangha to ask about her role. A press officer replied to confirm Labour “had to” commence a “serious investigation” into antisemitism in Kensington CLP and that local members had been suspended “due to antisemitism”.
Multiple sources have told to us that, to date, no party members in Kensington have been for suspected antisemitism. These sources include people with access to the members’ database.
Our sources also confirm that there has been no investigation of any type, let alone a “serious investigation” into antisemitism. Many Kensington Labour members have also separately stated to us that they have heard no gossip or news about suspensions or investigations.
Nothing to add
We contacted London Region, asking how many Kensington members had been suspended and if there had been an investigation into antisemitism. A press officer replied that he had “nothing further to add” to the claims made against the CLP membership.
We understand that members have not yet raised any concerns at Kensington CLP meetings regarding the conduct of the NEC; the lies of London Region officials; the treatment of local Jewish communities; the disenfranchisement of a score of British Somalis; the subversion of local democratic procedures and the character assassinations of elected local politicians by unelected officials.
Labour’s National Executive Committee torpedoed local party democracy to prevent local candidates from being chosen in the marginal seat of Kensington for the next general election. Here’s what we know about how they did it…
Former MP barred
October 17th: Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) excludes Labour’s only ever Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad from the candidate longlist. Read about it here.
The three-person NEC panel that excludes Dent Coad includes two influential figures committed to Sir Keir Starmer’s purge of socialists: LukeAkehurst, director of the lobbying organisation We Believe in Israel. And Shama Tatler, co-chair of Labour to Win, a right-wing campaigning group.
NEC & London Region usurp local officers
October 20th: Regional Director of Greater London Labour Party Pearleen Sangha dismisses two Kensington Selection Committee members for “openly supporting” a candidate. Sangha speculates about “a blatant attempt to undermine the process” – the two members reject the accusation.
A more right-wing member of the Committee remains in post, despite openly campaigning for candidate Joe Powell, even appearing in his campaign video. Complaints from party members to London Region about the double standard go unanswered.
Local candidate would have been shortlisted
October 27th: Councillor Kasim Ali wins every round in the South Branch vote, meaning he needs to be selected by just one of the remaining two branches to make the shortlist. Afsana Lachaux is also nominated.
Results from the South Branch vote are circulated to members in accordance with Labour’s democratic procedures. Sangha declares that this constitutes a “leak” and runs all subsequent meetings and votes herself, keeping the results secret.
In a statement, senior Kensington Labour officers say: “In all three Kensington branch selection meetings, Sangha overruled local elected role-holders and chaired the Zoom call herself…muting all attendees. She has been unprofessional, hostile, and insulting to local role holders, often making threats and rarely responding to messages”.
screengrabs from twitter / tomorrowsmps
Intervention over Black History Month
October 31st: A Constituency Labour Party (CLP) ‘All Members’ meeting with a Black History Month theme is scheduled, but on the day of the meeting, London Region informs the CLP Secretary the meeting cannot take place during the selection process. The CLP Secretary asks if the meeting can go ahead if the discussion is limited to the Black history theme and presented by a local campaigner. London Region agrees but states that no candidates can attend.Continue reading →
In an unashamed assault on party democracy last month, Keir Starmer’s Labour targeted and excluded significant numbers of British Somalis from the shortlisting process for candidates hoping to become Kensington’s next member of parliament. Urban Dandy has been given details of how the party’s bureaucracy was mobilised to guarantee a result favourable to the party’s right wing.
The Kensington Constituency Labour Party (CLP) is made up of three branches: South, North East and North West. Labour members in each branch were to vote to narrow down their choice of candidates from a longlist to a shortlist of three, then to vote for one candidate to take on Conservative incumbent Felicity Buchan at the next general election. Former Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad had already been barred from standing by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in a factional right-wing intervention.
South Branch
Next in the NEC’s sights was Councillor Kasim Ali, a prominent local politician and a British Somali with a history of community activism in North Kensington. From several Kensington Labour insiders we have heard that, with Dent Coad removed, the NEC hoped that one of their preferred candidates would secure the candidacy. But at the South Branch’s 27th October selection vote, Cllr Ali eased to a comfortable victory, winning every round.
image from Twitter / Kasim Ali
With Cllr Ali needing a nomination from just one of the two North Kensington branches to secure a place on the shortlist, the NEC took over, overriding the CLP’s democratic procedures and fixing the result. Here’s how they did it…
North East Branch
The North East vote scheduled for 1st November was postponed on the pretext of the branch not having the correct Zoom license to accommodate the number of members wishing to attend. Local Labour sources told us that a new license was hastily purchased but Labour’s London Region Executive postponed the vote until 9th November, giving the NEC time to create the chaotic circumstances in which they could guarantee victory for one of their preferred candidates.
By the day of the North West selection on 3rd November, a familiar tactic from the Corbyn era had been put in play to prevent Cllr Ali from securing a nomination at his home branch vote. A vitriolic message about one of the candidates, Mete Coban, was sent to all CLP members from an email address named ‘Danger in Kensington.’ Access to the membership mailing list is strictly limited so the email is likely to have been circulated by somebody holding a senior position within Labour at local, regional or NEC level. Two local Labour sources told Urban Dandy that the NEC’s two preferred candidates had also been provided with the membership’s contact data “months before”.
The highly dubious message was unquestioningly amplified in a vicious attack piece on Kasim Ali in a local blog, while Jewish News blamed “a group of activists” in North Kensington. There was no evidence that the councillor or any of his associates had a connection to the message and no explanation was offered as to how they could have circulated it or what their motivation to sabotage the process might have been. Labour bureaucrats seized upon the story to torpedo the CLP’s democracy, taking control of the selection process and barring Cllr Ali from standing.
Senior Kensington Labour members issued a statement that included the line “there is evidence that the racist message was written by a local known not be (sic) a Labour Party member and was initially posted on a Kensington Community Facebook page.”
There will be more on what Cllr Ali describes as a “fake antisemitism” smear in a later article.
North West Branch
On the day of the ‘Danger in Kensington’ email, Labour members in the North West branch were set to vote on who to shortlist. However, a significant number were prevented from doing so. A Labour councillor told Urban Dandy that “14 to 16 members” were blocked. Another councillor informed us that the number was closer to 20. Both told us that all the excluded members had one thing in common, they were British Somali.
By this point, the selection meetings, held on Zoom, were being chaired by Labour’s London Region Director, Parleen Sangha. According to a local councillor, Sangha told some of the British Somali members “we can’t hear you” before removing them from the meeting and not readmitting them as they attempted to re-join the meeting for an hour and a half. Others simply saw the image below when they clicked on the meeting link.
(Screengrabbed and sent to Urban Dandy by a British Somali Labour member in the North West branch)
We have been informed that an elected Labour councillor for Golborne ward (part of the North West branch and one of the most impoverished wards in Britain) received a text message from a London Region representative as voting commenced telling them ‘I don’t have the correct email for you’ as a justification for cancelling their access to the ballot. The councillor is also British Somali and was using the same email address used when registering as a party member and used to log in to all subsequent meetings and votes.
No results from the North East or North West selection votes were published, and Joe Powell will stand for Labour at the general election having easily defeated the other shortlisted candidates, Mete Coban and Apsana Lachaux on 9th November.
Racial Profiling?
Labour councillors who spoke to Urban Dandy stopped just short of accusing Keir Starmer’s NEC and London Region of racism against British Somalis. They informed us that Labour members in the North East branch, mostly from ethnic minority communities, were also prevented from participating, while former party members with favourable views of Starmer were enabled by London Region to fast-track their re-joining on the day of the vote.
We asked London Region for clarity on why Cllr Ali’s bid for candidacy was undemocratically denied. They responded that they “had to” commence a “serious investigation” into antisemitism in Kensington CLP and that local members had been suspended “due to antisemitism”.
Their reply to Urban Dandy did not mention Kasim Ali or explain the prima facie racial profiling of British Somalis.
On 4th November Kasim Ali was interviewed by the NEC over the ‘Danger in Kensington’ email. They accepted that there was no connection between the councillor or his supporters and the message. However, his right to stand was not reinstated. It is not clear if this meeting was the “serious investigation” referred to by London Region.
A Labour source told Urban Dandy that they had searched the membership database and found that none had been suspended for suspected antisemitism.
Cllr Ali told us that he asked the Labour Party to investigate the circulation of the ‘Danger in Kensington’ email but, to date, the party has not done this.
We also understand that Cllr Ali was blocked from speaking at the CLP’s Black History Month event in October following a concern raised by a rival candidate that this would give Ali an unfair advantage in the constituency selection. London Region issued a ban on longlisted Kensington candidates attending the event. Cllr Ali complained to London Region about his exclusion but has not received a reply.
Starmer’s Labour
Under the leadership of Keir Starmer, Labour has purged its left-wing, often expelling or suspending members on spurious grounds, while many others who identify as left-wing have resigned their memberships in protest at Labour’s dramatic shift to the right.
When people rose up to protest racism in Summer 2020, Starmer dismissed the Black Lives Matter movement as “Black Lives Matter moment” while the party has at times positioned itself to theright of Suella Braverman on migration.
The signs are that Labour in government would be pro-war, unreservedly pro-NATO and cement the UK’s role as junior partner and enabler of the United States’ constant war-making. US foreign policy currently includes bombing Somalia, humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and occupation of a significant proportion of Syria.
To fulfil this agenda, Starmer and his bureaucracy must minimise the number of potentially anti-war politicians in parliament. In Kensington, once the party members had indicated a preference for Kasim Ali, the NEC abandoned any pretence of a commitment to democracy.
It can be claimed that the removal of Cllr Ali and the disenfranchisement of British Somali members was about ensuring a preferred candidate would stand, rather than a case of racism. But would Labour have done this if Ali was not a Black, Muslim, African, working-class British Somali in North Kensington?
Would an antisemitic trope have been weaponised if the targeted candidate and party members came from a different demographic? And if so, would its use have passed without comment or investigation by the party and media?
Generating fear in our Jewish community and disenfranchising our British Somali community appear to be acceptable collateral damage to the fanatical clique that has control of Labour. Starmer’s party is liberal-fascist, uninterested in the cause of labour and intent on using power to advance the class interests of the British establishment and the economic elite.
Emma Dent Coad, the only Labour politician to win Kensington in its true blue history, spoke to Urban Dandy about the Labour party’s decision to bar her from standing at the next general election.
Context
Architectural historian, author, activist, and local resident Emma Dent Coad was elected to Kensington and Chelsea council in 2006. She campaigned on the full range of issues impacting residents in the most inequitable local authority in Britain including housing rights, poverty, and air quality. Dent Coad’s background in housing made her an ideal choice to be Labour’s 2017 parliamentary candidate in a constituency home to oligarchs and royals yet has seen a dramatic life expectancy decline in the borough’s poorest wards once austerity economics was imposed in 2010.
The councillor’s 2014 report, updated after the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, The Most Unequal Borough in Britain, used incontestable data to lay bare the shocking inequity of the borough where at one end 51% of children live in poverty vs at the other only 6% suffer this indignity. Dent Coad’s 2022 book, One Kensington, cemented her reputation as an expert on the impact of neoliberal economics in the borough.
Emma Dent Coad at a poster design competition for children affected by Grenfell, 2017.
2017
On Friday, June 11th the final seat in the 2017 general election was declared and Dent Coad was elected MP for Kensington: a first-time Labour gain. Winning by 20 votes, Dent Coad joined the activist Labour MPs’ Socialist Campaign Group in parliament. The role of socialists diminished under New Labour, but backbenchers like Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, and Diane Abbott kept community-based democratic, internationalist socialist politics alive in parliament. Labour’s left-right, democrat-technocrat schism had widened under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, yet New Labour was confident enough in its political project to co-exist with anti-war backbenchers and their frequent rebellions.
Three days after the Kensington constituency victory, the fire at Grenfell Tower brought the local issues that Emma Dent Coad had campaigned on to national prominence, crystalizing her parliamentary priority: justice for Grenfell.
Party leader Corbyn and other Campaign Group members were supportive of North Kensington; but Labour’s bureaucracy was dominated by factional enemies, intent on sabotaging the leadership, and as came to be revealed, actively worked to deny Labour an election victory. The harassment of Diane Abbott, the diversion of funds from left-wing candidates in marginal seats to right-wingers in safe seats and smear campaigns were among the methods deployed by this group, which included Iain McNicol, Labour’s then General Secretary. In 2017, Labour finished just 2227 votes short of being able to form a government.
Internal Labour documents leaked in 2020 showed senior party bureaucrats favouring cronyism over Corbynism. They preferred Tory rule with all the misery that brings to their own party’s kinder, more equitable, leadership. As the leaks became public (albeit not reported in the mainstream news) Dent Coad revealed her campaign had received little support from Labour HQ even when it became clear that an historic win in Kensington was on the cards.
Dent Coad explained: “When the atrocity of the Grenfell Tower fire ripped through my neighbourhood, I was finally sent help from McNicol’s office. However, it quickly became clear that this was not the help requested; I needed assistance with my casework team, who were struggling to help those impacted by the fire, but instead the general secretary sent someone to police me.Continue reading →
North Kensington is in a state of political, legal and emotional limbo. How and why? Here are summaries of some of the stories already published and the arguments already won….
This article contains references to the 14th June 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.
Two Significant Events
After the initial post-fire outpouring of grief, energy and hope, things have slowed to a crawl in North Kensington. The most significant developments have been with the Conservative leadership of the council (RBKC); its survival and consolidation of power.
Neither of these things was inevitable, with RBKC having to make promises of “change” to stay in power, then having to break the promises to prevent the dilution of its power in the north of the borough.
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Two More
Two things will happen soon which could impact the current unsatisfactory and traumatising deadlock in North Kensington: The first is on October 9th when Kensington Labour party Councillors launch a People’s Convention in a bid to undercut RBKC’s business-as-usual approach.
This push for a greater say in decision making for Northern residents will be ignored by the Council, who will kick any devolution proposal into the long grass when Labour and groups of residents persist. Expect RBKC to employ its tried and tested bureaucratic mechanisms, outlined in detail in our previous article.
The Labour-led campaign for modest devolution is augmented by other moves aimed at balancing RBKC’s power with a more prominent role for residents.
Lynton Crosby-style tactics of calculating the absolute minimum they need to appear to be doing to pacify the population have carried RBKC this far. But their latest recovery gimmick, a gameshow-style decision-making process to distribute Grenfell-related funds, has only added to the sense that the local authority is unable to act in the interests of residents they hold in contempt.
Along with the devolution push, the upcoming findings of the Tutu Foundation’s investigation into alleged institutional racism, and the selection of a new Chair, at the Westway Trust could revive the sense that North Kensington is an area still alive with the ability to force justice and political change in the face of entrenched power structures.
The second upcoming event is the opening of phase two of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry in January 2020. Phase two will consider the design, refurbishment, fire safety and management of Grenfell Tower. It will also look at how the authorities communicated with residents, the immediate causes of the fire and the response to the fire by the relevant bodies.
The ability or otherwise of this phase of the Inquiry to move towards genuine justice will go a long way to determining whether North Kensington will ever be given the space it needs to recover from its collective and individual trauma.
While we wait for events to unfold, here are some truths that have been laid bare by our scrutiny of RBKC’s post-Grenfell performance so far:
1. The Tories Do Not Want to Change
The Kensington Conservatives will not change their approach any more than they have to. That much is evident from their performance since June 2017.
The post-fire Kensington Tories were smart enough to promise change. Without that promise, they might well have been removed or put into special measures by the national government. But the council’s record before the fire was so abysmal here in North Kensington that their piecemeal approach to change since has fallen woefully short of satisfying anybody.
Some people split hairs about RBKC’s performance over the past two years and identify some individual Tory Councillors or Council officers who at times appear sincere. This is probably more a reflection of how unbearable it is for some to acknowledge the reality of an uncaring culture operating within an indifferent system. Can it really be that after 72 deaths and widespread trauma, that there is no real change to either the rules or the power balance? Rather than face the harsh reality of the answer, some choose the palliative of picking out hopeful signs of potential change.
The Tory promise of change was followed by political maneuvers to deny this change actually happening, highlighted on this website over the past two years, see the links below. The logic for this is that there is more incentive for the Tories to not change than to change. To alter the power balance, even a little bit, would dilute Tory power in Kensington and might set an ideological precedent for other downtrodden areas to demand their own devolution and liberation.
On an individual level, these Councillors’ future careers as property developers, consultants (to property developers) and politicians (representing big capital – including property developers) hinge on their loyalty to one class at the expense of another. No horror changes this equation.
So while the people of North Kensington are retraumatised by unmet promises, RBKC has been able to get back to business-as-usual, with enough superficial ‘change’ peppering their work to satisfy the national government (represented by the implausibly meek Grenfell taskforce) and to convince themselves that they are doing good deeds on behalf of the ungrateful hordes.
2. Post-Grenfell Systems are Structurally Weak
RBKC cannot be persuaded or pleaded with to change. They could only be coerced by a rigorous system of checks and balances, so they avoid such a system. As we detailed in our investigation, How RBKC Subverts Democracy to Prevent Change, the policies put in place following the worst fire in Britain since World War Two lacked an implementation mechanism – it was left to the goodwill of Councillors with vested interests in keeping the status quo.
The Conservatives in Kensington Town Hall have manipulated the political system to avoid scrutiny. This is outlined, blow by blow, in our article. To do this was a political choice made by Cllr Elizabeth Campbell, her deputy Cllr Taylor-Smith and a host of highly-paid RBKC officers, starting with chief executive Barry Quirk and including many under him who have been complicit.
Nationally, the Conservatives need the Council in place. And at this point, Labour doesn’t see Grenfell as a big vote winner. Where is their outreach? Where is their mayor?
3. Trauma is Being Perpetuated
People in North Kensington have engaged with the process but have been re-traumatised and exhausted by their efforts being met with a lack of tangible change. They might not know what change looks like (revolution, devolution, evolution…), but they know what it isn’t.
A lack of seriousness when it comes to delivering change in North Kensington has left us in this purgatory, unable to move on. There is no argument about where the blame lies for this failure.
Attention now falls on political and legal efforts to deliver change and justice to a community that deserves both.
How does a local authority go from being a national embarrassment on the verge of special measures to being secure in its position and back to business-as-usual in under two years?
The 2017 Grenfell Tower fire was the worst domestic fire in Britain since world war two and it happened in the richest borough in the country. Seventy-two lives were taken, more have been lost in the fall-out. There have been no arrests of politicians, council officers or others who made fateful decisions and ignored warnings in the run-up to the fire.
In 2018 Kensington and Chelsea Council (RBKC) commissioned the Centre for Public Scrutiny and the Democratic Society to carry out a review of the Council and to produce recommendations to enable the local authority to move forward. The ‘Change’ programme that resulted has suffered from a severe lack of public scrutiny and has been anything but democratic…
Urban Dandy uses RBKC’s own documents to reveal how the Council adopted a policy known as the Twelve Principles of Good Governance, then proceeded to bury it in a complex bureaucratic system. The article shows how opportunities to apply the principles were spurned, and worse, how Councillors often seemed determined to ensure there would be no real change.
Overseeing the process has been the leader of RBKC, Elizabeth Campbell, who promised ‘change’ to survivors and the bereaved but who has appeared at key moments and in key meetings to help ensure no fundamental change has been implemented. We are awaiting comment from her on her role and the performance of her Council in delivering on her promises.
We also reveal the rising costs of the ‘Change’ programme, the methods by which RBKC has managed to stifle meaningful challenge to its approach and how they have been aided by the media and the national government. Questions are also raised about the role of the local Labour party and we look at the calls for devolution for North Kensington.
The article is a defence of democracy and transparency in Kensington and will be published at the start of September.
Our previous articles following this story can be found here.
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